Big news, at least if you have £1 million to spare and you think Versailles would be OK if it had a little more gold trim: fashion brand Versace is about to start doing houses.
Well, flats actually. Promising "the ultimate in branded living experiences", the Aykon Nine Elms development in London is a 50-storey tower whose pricey apartments will be fitted out entirely in Versace. So if you're worth a couple of billion and you like to dress head-to-toe in the stuff, you can now augment the experience by giving your home a floor-to-ceiling Versace makeover too.
The only thing the super-rich like more than admiring themselves in a mirror, goes the thinking, is admiring themselves in a Versace mirror hung on a wall decorated in Versace wallpaper while sipping Darjeeling poured from a Versace teapot. I don't expect the oxygen pumped through the air conditioning system in the new flats is Versace-branded, but now that I've posited the idea in print I expect someone at the label's Milan HQ is already working on it. I'll take 10 per cent, guys.
When Versace launched the project in London earlier this month, it chose the luxurious Dorchester Hotel as its shop window. Among the motors parked outside, noted one eagle-eyed reporter, were a Range Rover in mirrored gold and a couple of Rollers in red and electric blue. No prizes for guessing where the cars' owners were headed. Take-up was good, too: although the building won't open for business until 2020, 23 of the 50 floors sold out.
Makes you think though, doesn't it? I mean, what will a Versace doorbell sound like? How will a Versace toilet seat feel under buttocks tired from a day spent making phone calls in a Lear jet? What quality of light will a Versace bulb throw on a Damien Hirst spin painting? A richer sort, presumably.
I have more questions: are you allowed books in this antiseptically awful environment? Is there a drawer for rubber bands, loose change, dead birthday candles and those funny-shaped plasters no injury could possibly require? And will klaxons sound and black-uniformed private security guards arrive if you try to put baggy grey M&S Y-fronts into the commode? Apparently the lucky owners get flown out to Milan to choose their fittings, but they could equally well be black op'd over there on a rendition flight to face a water-boarding (sparkling, naturally) for their perceived lack of taste.
Now my house is already fairly heavily Ikea-branded so I'm not sure I'm going to be going down the Nine Elms/million quid/Versace tap route to domestic nirvana. But I quite like the idea of clothing labels and retailers doing interior design makeovers. I'd baulk at a cashmere toilet seat by Pringle but I'd love to see what Vivienne Westwood could do with a kids' playroom. And who hasn't dreamed of a JD Sports-themed living room complete with Nike swoosh wallpaper, flammable rayon carpets, sofas upholstered in grey marl sweatshirt material and a motorised La-Z-Boy reclining armchair shaped like a massive New York Yankees baseball cap?
Huh. Liars, every one of you ...
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