Donatella Versace still hasn’t met Blur after accidentally inviting Blue to Fashion Week

Donatella Versace has commented on that spectacular Blue/Blur mix-up – and she’s still peeved she hasn’t met the Country House stars.

In one of the funniest noughties yarns we’ve heard in quite a while, Antony Costa revealed last week that he and his Blue bandmates were accidentally invited to Milan Fashion Week by Donatella Versace, who actually wanted a similarly named indie band instead.

The story went viral on Instagram as the account Love of Huns shared it, with celebs including Clara Amfo, Trisha Goddard and Arielle Free in stitches at the error.

Now, Donatella herself has chimed in, and it sounds like she’s still salty about the confusion.

The 66-year-old shared the story on her Instagram stories and joked: ‘Well… I’ve still not met Blur’ – adding a crying laughing emoji and a woman shrugging.

Blue – made up of Antony, Lee Ryan, Duncan James and Simon Webbe – released their debut single All Rise in 2001 and reached number four in the charts, before hitting number one with their next two singles, Too Close and If You Come Back. 

Speaking on Ben Hanlin’s Ben Behaving Dadly podcast, Antony explained that their quick rise to fame resulted in an invite to Milan from Italian design legend Donatella.

The 39-year-old said: ‘In 2001 we released our first single, it was going really well for us and we got invited to Milan Fashion Week by Donatella Versace.

‘So we got kitted out by Versace at Bond Street. I had the leather pants, the leather jacket. I thought I was the nuts. We got a private plane out there, they flew us out there.

‘We landed, went to the fashion show, and afterwards they were like “Look, we want you to meet Donatella”. You lined up like we were meeting the Queen.’

However, when Donatella met the band, she ‘pied’ them, leaving Blue rather confused, and it wasn’t until they flew back home that they found out why the designer had given them the cold shoulder. 

Antony continued: ‘To cut a long story short, when we get back to London, and she had invited Blur and not Blue. 

‘She’s obviously gone to her PR and said “get me Bluh”, and we were the new band out, so they must have thought, oh she means Blue.’

Who knew Donatella preferred Song 2 over All Rise? 

In fairness to the confused PRs, at the time of Milan Fashion Week in spring 2001, the members of Blur had been focusing on other projects, with Damon Albarn working on Gorillaz, Graham Coxon producing solo work and Alex James songwriting for other artists. 

But it seems the rock stars found out about the mix-up, as Antony said: ‘I met Alex James years later, and he went, mucking about, “oi you, you took our tickets”.’

Hopefully, Blur will get a few invites in the post next season, to make up for lost time. 

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