Atelier Versace draws on Gaga and Grace Jones

Who better to kick off the spring 2014 couture season with a cameo than Lady Gaga, whose amped up and idiosyncratic wardrobe has done wonders for this rarefied discipline ever since she donned her first meat dress in 2010?

She wasn't in that this evening, of course. Appearing at the Atelier Versace show, as face of the Italian house's ad campaign this season, she wore a draped black silk column dress with a sparkling beaded hood so next season it hadn't even hit the catwalk yet. Her entrance was look one of the collection, as it were.

Models walking to a soundtrack sourced both from Gaga's back catalogue and latest album Artpop wore similar. Sinuous silk and jersey combined in drapes and cut-outs with strict and smart tailoring, all given that haute treatment in scatterings - no, lashings - of bugle beads and mirror tiles. 
There were sheer tulle tops on parachute-skirted dresses, embroidered with beads and micro-paillettes designed to look like tattoos and body art. Elsewhere they came as geometric panels of silver on pale blue and champagne gowns, like glitzy motherboards holding them together at the seams 
This contrast of craft and street cool was precisely the balance Donatella Versace had in mind, and it's something Gaga embodies too: not only hip but also high-end.

'I love to combine the traditions of couture with the daring of contemporary life,' Versace said in her shownotes. 'This collection has a control and elegance, as well as a provocative attitude.'

Her Atelier has never dealt with the saccharine or the overtly feminine, preferring something more tough and traditionally sexy. Those tattoo embellishments and cowl hoods gave modern edge to otherwise classic goddess gowns but also referenced this house's strong heritage of fantastic 80s flourishes. There were shades of Grace Jones, for instance, and of Krystle Carrington in sequinned batwing dresses and furs.

And there was Lady Gaga looking on, a latterday symbiosis of the two if ever there was one. 

Click the gallery to view all the looks from the Atelier Versace spring 2014 collection