By Alice Gregory

In the big leagues of fashion, there is only one designer who has consistently challenged the paradox of power and sex — and she's done it with a laugh, a cigarette and a billion dollar business. "Ah, my kind of girl - blond!''

These were Donatella Versace's first words to me, and they were spoken with the campy, self-conscious irony that gilds most of her accelerated speech. The 60-year-old fashion designer's husky voice sounds more Slavic than it does Italian, and she assumes a breezy, faux-entitled lilt when joking, which she usually is. 

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/