The man whose name is on the Versace bottle was shot dead in 1997. The house he built is now owned by a rival.
Gianni Versace founded the house in Milan in 1978, with his brother Santo running the business and his sister Donatella designing beside him. The look was loud, sexy and gold, the opposite of Armani's quiet tailoring. On 15 July 1997 Gianni was shot outside his Miami Beach mansion by Andrew Cunanan. Donatella took over as creative director and shaped the brand for nearly thirty years.
In December 2025 that family era effectively ended. Prada Group, the rival Milan house, completed its purchase of Versace from the American group Capri Holdings for about 1.25 billion euros. Lorenzo Bertelli, son of Miuccia Prada, became Versace's executive chairman. The Medusa now answers to Prada.
The perfume was never made in that atelier anyway. Versace fragrance is produced under licence by the Italian firm EuroItalia. The biggest men's seller is Eros, launched in 2012 by perfumers Aurelien Guichard and Domitille Bertinchamps. It is a fresh-sweet blue scent, mint and green apple over tonka and vanilla, wrapped in Greek-god branding. Bright Crystal does the same job on the women's side.
Here is the receipt. The Medusa head, the mythology and the runway drama are Versace. The liquid is a EuroItalia formula, sold in huge numbers and discounted hard within months of most launches. That is normal for designer fragrance. Eros is a genuinely likeable, easy scent. What you pay extra for is the bottle and the name, not a secret recipe.
Our Eros Pour Homme captures that mint-apple-and-vanilla signature for a fraction of the Medusa price, UK-made at 35%. See the full Versace collection or read the best Versace Eros dupes in the UK.
