I Can’t Take My Eyes Off Donatella Versace’s New Look

Valerie Monroe’s newsletter, How Not to F*ck Up Your Face, is on Substack.

The before and after photos! The Devil Wears Prada opening-night videos! The plastic surgeons’ commentary! When Donatella Versace stepped out in public with a face that was less familiar than the one we’re used to seeing on her, it sparked a flurry of speculation about what work she might’ve had done to look so refreshed.

But was much about her face actually that different? Evolutionary psychologist Bernhard Fink suggests that the perceived Donatella metamorphosis may be due to a combination of several factors. First, aesthetic treatments have become more refined, and there’s an increasing awareness among physicians that a “natural” and age-corresponding (read: authentic) look is preferred over the enhancement of a particular feature that may create a physical “mismatch” (like Donatella’s previously overfilled lips). Second, Donatella has grown older, which may have changed her features in a way that makes them seem more age-corresponding; in other words, she has grown into her face. I don’t think her latest facial adventure makes her look more youthful, but along with a relatively conservative hairstyle, it gives her a certain “housewives” look — one that’s more relatable, even more … American.

Fink also brings up a notion that I’m not sure many of us who partake in facial fiddling consider deeply: No matter what we do, our bodies manifest the effects of aging, which means that the procedures we choose when we’re younger may have consequences later. It’s been all over the beauty news that people injected with filler may be more difficult facelift patients later because the filler can migrate or alter the quality of the underlying tissue. As Allure reported, when board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Christian Subbio polled 114 facial plastic surgeons online, 82 percent said they’d found “significant scarring” in patients who sought facelifts after using Sculptra or other biostimulators, which are injections used to stimulate collagen production. And in a 2023 survey by the Aesthetic Society, more than half of the 156 plastic surgeons who responded said it was harder to perform facelifts on individuals who received recurring full-face filler injections. For some people, that’s enough to encourage them to consider surgery rather than less invasive treatments at a (to me, shockingly) young age. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports, for example, that there was a 7 percent increase from 2022 to 2023 in people ages 30 to 39 who are choosing facelift surgery and a 45 percent increase in individuals in that age category who are choosing a forehead lift.

Another consideration: How can even the most aesthetically skilled injector — one who is exquisitely trained in facial anatomy — predict exactly how a face will age? Maybe they can in a general way, but it seems to me that because no treatment can actually stop the aging process, once you start making various kinds of adjustments (with filler, laser, or other heat-based or radio-frequency devices) there’s no end to trying to keep up with the goal of an appropriately proportioned face. Fink points out that Donatella’s previously disproportionate mouth was likely the result of an injector’s lack of skill at creating aesthetically suitable proportions rather than her request for plumper lips.

Here’s what I have to say about Donatella Versace’s revamped face: nothing.

Well, almost nothing. I am so tired of the carny hawking about the latest celebrity transformation, onlookers remonstrating about ruined beauty or fawning over a “mind-blowing” new face. It’s not that I don’t understand the impulse to stare: I can’t take my eyes off Donatella’s update either. And I do wonder what it is that precipitates the impulse to not look away.

In Donatella’s case, I think it’s partly that her face has always been interesting, in that it reflected her uniqueness: the bleached, alien eyebrows; the charcoal-blackened eyes; the overly plump lips; all of which — at least in the public imagination — reflected echoes of her difficult life (an adored brother murdered, a cocaine addiction). Her latest transformation, at 69, makes her look more conservative, tamed, in line with traditional beauty ideals — and consequently less arresting.

I hope that as the options for facial work become more available, we continue to see examples of a recent mini-trend of being more forgiving of all kinds of choices (and results). Is it the holiday season that’s influencing us to feel more generous with ourselves and each other? Or is it that we feel under the gun in so many other ways that in this one arena, we want to give ourselves a break?

I’m not going to pass judgment on Donatella or anyone else who chooses aesthetic intervention. Both Fink and dermatologist-psychiatrist Dr. Amy Wechsler noted that the most important question to ask about the Donatella situation is: “Is she happy with it?” And if she is, God bless. I couldn’t agree more.