Reggio di Calabria

I spent six weeks in Reggio di Calabria, Italy, then my boyfriend met up with me and we traveled to the Amalfi Coast, Florence, Milan, Budapest, Munich, Prague, Vienna, Paris, London and Dublin.

Among the accused are members of the most notorious families in Reggio di Calabria.

With reporting by Andrea Sachs/New York Reggio di Calabria, the southern Italian port city where Gianni Versace came of age, isn't the sort of place where enviably tasteful women nibble on lunch and devour the most recent issues of Vogue.

If geography is destiny, then Reggio di Calabria was a fitting birthplace for the Italian designer who built a $1 billion fashion empire on the notion that there should be no barriers between the worlds of high culture and low, no dividing line between the aesthetics of refinement and ostentation.

Gianni Versace began his career as a tailor and showman while a young boy in his mother's Reggio di Calabria dress salon.