Reports of a potential sale of the company added a heightened sense of drama to tonight’s Versace show. As folks filed into the tram depot where it was held, some wondered if this would be Donatella Versace’s last chance to take a bow. Others asked, what is Versace without Donatella?

It’s not just that she has shepherded the brand since her brother Gianni’s shocking death in 1997, scoring an early coup when Jennifer Lopez wore her dangerously low-cut jungle green chiffon number in 2000, the dress for which Google Image search was invented. No other living designer has so fully penetrated the zeitgeist; Donatella has been the subject of a Lady Gaga song and the star of one of Saturday Night Live’s funniest impersonations, and even though she was a late adopter, her online social media following dwarfs that of her peers. Perhaps only Karl Lagerfeld’s fame rivaled hers.

And so tonight, she reminded us all what she stands for. “I love clothes to empower, to give strength and confidence,” she wrote on Instagram. “With this collection, I am not following any rules. Only the rules of the Versace DNA.” She opened with a trio of pieces constructed from Versace Home duvets printed in house classic motifs and sculpted into exuberant shapes—Gianni’s own residences were a touchstone.

Since the 20th anniversary of Gianni’s death, Donatella has made a practice of revisiting the label’s past, a reedition phenomenon that has traveled across fashion. Among the other brand codes she touched on here, per the show notes, were the offset shoulders of Gianni’s final Atelier Versace haute couture show for fall 1997 and the costumes he designed for the ballet with fitted bodices and gravity-defying crinoline skirts. Everywhere you looked there were V’s: inset into bustier tops in contrasting colors, in the form of embellished breast pockets on casual shirts, and built into the color-blocked designs of chain-mail skirts and silk slips. The point Donatella was making was clear: Nobody knows these codes like I do.

“Being told what to do, being told what’s going to sell…I think fashion is creativity and creativity is instinct. If you try to please too many people, too many managers, creativity is gone,” she said in conversation at Milan’s Triennale museum on Thursday.

She had one eye on the future too. The innovative 3D-printed pieces introduced last season returned in more flamboyant forms, this time accented with oversized crystals. And the rhinestone-embroidered jeans seemed like a smart way to stay connected with the kids, beyond the required celebrity quotient in the front row. Explaining at that Triennale talk that she finds inspiration in the streets, Donatella said, “Looking at younger people, sometimes they mix clothes together in a way that is so interesting.”

But there was something especially poignant about the fact that the collection’s best pieces—a pair of sensuous dresses in unraveling metallic thread, one gold, the other silver—hailed from Donatella’s very first show, fall 1998 couture. The gold one in particular looked Oscar-worthy, with “winner” written all over it. Whatever happens next for Versace, and for Donatella, she did herself proud tonight.