Elton John's 'favourite designer' who is 'best since Yves Saint Laurent'

has spoken fondly of his love for the late Gianni Versace and declared the Italian fashion icon was his "favourite designer" before he was shot outside his Miami home in 1997. Gianni, who was one of the first designers to bridge the gap between fashion and the music world, maintained a very close friendship with Elton in the years before he died. The pair collaborated on various projects, including ballet and fashion shoots. In 1992, the pair joined forces to design a t-shirt for Elton's world tour. In his 2019 book, Me, Elton spoke about his deep feelings for the clothing extraordinaire.

He typed: "I wore his clothes all the time. I'd discovered his little shop in Milan at the end of the eighties and immediately became obsessed. He continued: "I thought I had stumbled across a genius, the greatest menswear designer since Yves Saint Laurent. He used the very best materials, but there was nothing starchy or po-faced about his designs: he made men's clothes that were fun to wear.

"My already high opinion skyrocketed when I was introduced to the man behind them. Meeting Gianni was almost weird, like finding out I had a long-lost twin brother in northern Italy. We were virtually identical: same sense of humour, same love of gossip, same interest in collecting, same unquiet mind. He couldn't switch off; he was always thinking, always coming up with some new way of doing what he did, which was everything."

Elton continued: "He could design children's clothes, glassware, dinner services, album covers - I got him to design the sleeve for The One, which he did beautifully. He had exquisite taste. He would always know of a little Italian church down a side street that had the most beautiful mosaic work in the nave, or a tiny workshop that made the most incredible porcelain. And he was the only person I've ever met who could shop like me. He would go out to buy a watch and come back with twenty. Actually, he was worse than me."

Elton has frequently paid tribute to Versace after his death and expressed how much he misses him in a touching post on Instagram in 2017. He wrote: "Twenty years since my beloved Gianni Versace left us. I still miss him so much. Love to all the family. E xx."

Elton was also close friends with , who was present at Gianni's funeral and was seen comforting the singer. It is said that Gianni's death brought the pair together after they had a falling out when Diana dropped out of the project that Elton was working on at the last minute.

Elton said he was furious then and began to worry that Diana was "losing touch with all sorts of really close friends, surrounding herself instead with people who told her what she wanted to hear".