At approximately 7:00 a.m. on July 15, 1997, the designer Gianni Versace was murdered. There were two gunshots in front of his mansion in South Beach, Miami. "When I heard the news, I replied, 'Gianni is not dead; Gianni is immortal.' I only realized it when we got to the hospital and I touched his bloody hand". Santo Versace, his brother, will turn 80 in December, while Gianni would have turned 78 a few days earlier. "Two years of difference that seemed like two generations - says Santo - he was an eternal child, I was a wise one," the administrator, a cerebral alter ego, the one who discovered the financiers. "For my family, it was a tragedy", Santo Versace told the newspaper Libero. "As it was for the company, Milan, and the Italian economy. When I think back to those days, we were the ones who set the pace in Paris. Gianni opened Milan Fashion Week, while Giorgio Armani closed it". The merger with Gucci was already announced, with Tom Ford serving as creative director and Domenico De Sole.... "Yes, the murder prevented the establishment of a luxury pole, which would undoubtedly have changed international fashion and Italy's destiny. It would only have served as a starting point for learning about other realities." Today, the Santo Versace Foundation, which he founded with his wife Francesca De Stefano, cares for the poor, single mothers, prisoners, women victims of violence, refugees, and the last. "My wife and I did not have children, and our legacy is this Foundation. On December 8, we baptized Sarah, a 5-year-old Nigerian woman whose mother had been a victim of trafficking, and Lyanna, a 9-month-old baby born on the boat. We provide scholarships, meals, and mental health services to young people who have been abandoned by their families. And with the Metamorphosis Project, we arrived at La Scala, where the Orchestra of the Sea plays string instruments made by prisoners from the wood of migrants' boats". All of this is in memory of Gianni, a brilliant brother who was killed in Miami 27 years ago.
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