THE MAFIA?
VERY POSSIBLY
Kate Hatch, who modelled Versace, says what the fashion world really suspects ON HEARING that Versace had been shot in the head and killed, I turned instantly to my companion with two words: the Mafia! It now emerges that the police in Florida may also be coming round to this view. Though Andrew Cunanan, a homosexual prostitute and alleged serial killer, is still the prime suspect, the investi- gation has been widened to consider the possibility that the Mafia ordered the mur- der. The two bullets in Versace's skull bore all the marks of a Mafia execution, as did the dead bird found by the body, a tra- ditional Mafia sign that the victim talked too much.
For over a decade I worked regularly in Milan as a model. Everyone assumes that all models are stupid, but there are some things that you would have to be halfwitted and blind to miss. One of these is the Mafia.
As an 18-year-old, I didn't know exactly what La Famiglia's interests in the fashion business were. What I did know was that when I worked in Italy I received only 50 per cent of my fee. Twenty per cent was the standard agency commission and 30 per cent went in tax. When I queried the validity of paying such a tax on undeclared earnings, I was met with silence from my Italian agent, who appeared quite non- plussed at my impudence. Both my French and English agents advised me to drop this particular line of questioning if I didn't want my Italian bookings to dry up myste- riously.
Nothing has changed since then below the surface, anyway. In Milan, you still end up with an inexplicably smaller percentage of your fee than anywhere else in Europe or in the United States, despite the introduction of official registration that supposedly accounts for all deductions made from your pay-cheque. In the early 1990s, Versace's business was caught up in Italy's Mani Pulite — Clean Hands crackdown on corruption. Versace's broth- er and business partner, Santo, was con- victed in May of bribing tax inspectors. Several other well-known fashion figures were found guilty of tax evasion, including Versace's arch-rival, Giorgio Armani. He admitted, quite candidly, that in order to run a successful business in Milan you paid off the Mafia. The alternative was shutting up shop.
When I went back to Italy, after a break of several years, to do a television item for an English fashion programme, Versace provided the presenter and me with tickets for one of his shows. It was a fantastically glitzy event. When it was over we raised disbelieving eyebrows at each other. Where did the money to pay for it come from, when Versace's shops — each new one more richly decorated than the last always appeared to be empty? We mouthed the 'M' word to each other and quickly left.
Frank Monte, a private investigator hired last year by Versace, is convinced that he was murdered by a professional killer. He believes that Andrew Cunanan is innocent, one of the reasons being that the assassin was heard to shout something at Versace in Italian. Mr Monte claims that Versace had recently told him of his fear of the hand of organised crime in fashion. One of the questions raised was the laundering of drugs profits.
I often modelled Versace on the cat- walk and for glossy magazines. Fashion is beautiful girls wafting gracefully in seam- less frocks, but drugs are also an integral part of that scene. Some years ago, there was a famous case of a model in Milan taking too much cocaine. After respond- ing badly to the taunts of an Italian play- boy with whom she was cavorting, she shot and killed him. The girl was jailed and the Milan model industry was chas- tened into a period of uncharacteristic moderation. Down came the lists which used to go up on the agency walls tempt- ing the girls to sign up for weekends in the palazzi of playboys, where endless alcohol, sex and, above all, narcotics were promised. Many of these agency clingers- on subsequently took their fat wallets back to the palazzi with the intention of lying low until the furore had subsided, but on my return to Milan I was surprised to see how many of the fat wallets of old were slinking back from their Palladian pastoral retreats.
After undergoing a period of similar disgrace, drugs are back too. According to fashion insiders, places like New York are once again being run along the lines of Andy Warhol's 'Kitchen'. Model agents regularly send 'doctors' to administer an instant feel-good shot in the arm for a tired model to ensure she's on form for work as well as grateful to her agent for having her best interests at heart. Heroin is presently the drug of choice; in my day it was coke.
The first person ever to offer me cocaine was a Parisian model agent. I had just arrived fresh off the pages of the English Vogue, and he wanted to lure me away from my chosen agency and onto his books. Apparently, encouraging drug dependency is the preferred method of securing a girl's loyalty. As an abstemious and naive 18-year -old, I telephoned Jose Fonseca of Models One in London — I was out of my depth and wanted to come home. Jose advised me to keep my head down, get on with the work and avoid going out after dark. This was sound advice, which I heeded — for a while.
Soon afterwards I was working in New York with another English model who told me that the self-same Parisian agent repre- sented her. He knew she was an addict as well as a good earner, and he consistently topped up her pay-packet with cocaine. She seemed grateful for the time this saved her in visits to her drug-dealer.
I never said anything about these things to anyone inside or outside the fashion business. It just seemed to be an unspoken rule that you did not. If you mentioned your experiences to people on the outside, they might think you were implicated by association, while anyone in the business might be involved up to their eyeballs in drugs and not welcome the disapproving voice of an English prude.
The English model I met in New York now spends most of her time in and out of rehabilitation clinics, while the agent is one of the most successful characters in the business. He has beautiful homes all over the world and gorgeous girlfriends who have brilliant careers as long as they allow themselves to be 'tenderly cared for' by him. When I resisted this man's tentacles my reputation as a model took quite a beating. People don't want to face up to the seamy side of the fashion industry.
I don't know the real reason why Ver- sace died. Frank Monte believes the designer was killed because he threatened to blow the whistle on the laundering of drugs money. Perhaps it was because he became so powerful so quickly that he began to believe in the cult of his own per- son and deemed it unnecessary to sully his manicured hands with the back-handed game of the Milanese economy. I predict that nothing will be proved conclusively and that the fashion industry's machina- tions will go on much as before. Fashion is fantasy and people who dream for a living don't want to wake up.
Previous page
