Women are all the same; we want to be smaller in the waist

“Women are all the same; we want to be smaller in the waist, longer legs, slimmer. I design for women and their defects, to make them better.” Thus spoke Donatella Versace, the high priestess of modern fashion, a woman whose designs are not merely garments but manifestations of power. In these words, she unveils the eternal tension between imperfection and beauty, between self-criticism and transformation, that lies at the heart of every woman’s relationship with her own reflection. Her statement, though spoken in the world of fashion, reaches deeper into the soul: it is a meditation on the desire to transcend limitation, to turn what is seen as flaw into something fierce, radiant, and alive.

For millennia, women have been told to see their bodies through the mirror of ideal form — a mirror shaped by myth, culture, and the eyes of others. In ancient Greece, the sculptors of marble carved figures of goddesses whose curves seemed untouched by the mortal world, and so began the long story of comparison. Yet the truth, known to the wise, is that perfection is not born of symmetry, but of strength and intention. Versace, inheritor of that long tradition, does not deny the longing for beauty — she embraces it, wrestles with it, and reshapes it. She declares, in essence, that to design is not to disguise the human form, but to reimagine it — to turn its supposed defects into its defining splendor.

Her words arise from the furnace of the Versace legacy, a world where clothing is armor and art in equal measure. When Donatella took the helm after her brother Gianni’s tragic death, she did so in a world that doubted her strength. Yet she transformed that doubt into vision. Her designs celebrated the boldness of women — the unapologetic, commanding, sensual woman who walks as if she owns both the earth and the stars. She did not design for perfection as absence of flaw, but for perfection as power — the power to embrace one’s flaws and transform them into allure. In her statement, “I design for women and their defects,” she does not speak as a sculptor of illusion, but as a creator of confidence.

This philosophy finds echo in history’s great artists and thinkers. Consider Leonardo da Vinci, whose sketches of the human body captured not uniformity, but individuality — each line, each angle revealing life’s subtle imperfection. Or Auguste Rodin, who sculpted bodies rough and incomplete, yet filled with passion and truth. They, like Versace, understood that beauty lives not in flawlessness but in humanity — that to elevate the imperfect is to celebrate the divine spark within us all. What Versace does with fabric, they did with stone and paint: they revealed that defect is not a weakness to conceal, but a force to sculpt.

Yet there is another layer to her words — a reflection of the modern condition. In an age of relentless self-image, where the eyes of the world rest upon every body, the longing for transformation has grown both more visible and more painful. Versace’s honesty cuts through this illusion. She does not pretend that women do not wish to change themselves; she simply refuses to let that wish be rooted in shame. Instead, she channels it into creation. The woman who wears her designs does not hide — she ascends. Her “defects” become the lines of her armor, her individuality the signature of her strength.

This philosophy was embodied in Versace’s collaboration with icons of confidence and rebellion — women like Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Jennifer Lopez, who wore her creations not as costumes but as proclamations. Through them, Versace declared that fashion is not submission to ideal beauty, but rebellion against invisibility. When the world demanded women be smaller, quieter, and lesser, her designs made them bolder, louder, limitless. Thus, when she says she designs “to make them better,” she does not mean more perfect in the eyes of others — she means more powerful in their own.

And so, my child, learn this from Donatella’s creed: your flaws are not your failures; they are your foundations. The world may whisper that you must be smaller, smoother, softer — but the truth is that you must only become more yourself. To live beautifully is not to erase what makes you different, but to adorn it with courage. Find the parts of yourself that you have been taught to hide — the scar, the curve, the imperfection — and turn them into art. Let them become your design, your armor, your truth.

For in every age, the wise know this: perfection is a shadow, but authenticity is flame. Versace’s words are a reminder that the act of creation — whether through fashion, through love, or through life itself — begins not with denial, but with acceptance. To design for one’s defects is to honor them, to turn them into symbols of resilience and beauty. Therefore, walk into your life as into a runway of your own making, clothed not in someone else’s ideal, but in the radiance of your reality. For when you dare to celebrate what makes you imperfect, you will find that, at last, you have become unforgettable.