“I think it’s the responsibility of a designer to try to break rules,” the late Gianni Versace once said. “I’m a little Marco Polo. Going around and mixing cultures.”

Like the fashions that made him a favorite of rock stars and actresses with nothing to hide, the contents of Gianni Versace’s 64th Street townhouse – auctioned off at Sotheby’s last Saturday for nearly $6 million – never fail to capture the gaze.

Take an Empire-style console (after a design by Charles Percier), one of the auction highlights – it sold for $98,000, well above the $15,000-$20,000 estimate. Two Nubian female figures, breasts and heads capped in gold, support a thick marble tabletop. Behind them rest rectangular marble supports, with botanical gold decorative panels that mimic the up-down sweep of the gold cloth hanging over their torsos. The sides contain a gold image of a torch, and around the edges of the tabletop itself are gold Neoclassical Egyptian motifs, mostly lions. A mirror connects the two sides under the table. The total effect is staunchly geometric.

“He loved Neoclassical design, he loved furniture that had bones about it,” said Elaine Whitmire, senior vice president of Sotheby’s and the specialist in charge of the sale, adding that “while the Miami house was filled with bold colors and patterns, New York is very architectural and appropriately reflective of the city.”

Furthering the Neoclassical look are white marble sculptures such as the Young Shepherd with Pandean Pipes, and, also from the 19th century, Italian watercolors depicting muses and seasons. Where Versace veers off Empire is in his choice of paintings – all contemporary – and in the dazzling array of porcelain comprising literally a museum’s worth of European dinner settings: Royal Copenhagen Flora Danica, 18th-century Sevres, Worcester, Meissen, Limoges, and, of course, Versace’s own.

Photographs in the lavish catalog reveal a grand house whose white marble floors and walls provided a background for art by the likes of Roy Lichtenstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Julian Schnabel, against which the meticulously placed Neoclassical furnishings popped with all their ebonized and gilded glory. Decorative art was a mix of colorful contemporary Italian glass vases (by masters Fluvio Bianconi, Ercole Barovier, and Paolo Venini) with Empire candelabra, sarcophagi, and obelisks. Naturally, there were plenty of mirrors and sconces.

Photographs show that Coco Chanel’s apartment was crammed with bric-a-brac – a 180-degree turn from her disciplined brand image. The Versace belongings, however, were completely in keeping with the Medusa aesthetic, one that could produce a tight black dress fastened by gold safety pins. It’s showy and brash but firmly anchored in the good taste of the past and, for that, not entirely unclassy. “When you are born in a place such as Calabria, and there is beauty all around – a Roman bath, a Greek remain,” Versace once said, “you cannot help but be influenced by the Classical past.”

To wit: an Italian micro-mosaic table from the mid-19th century with a pair of Neoclassical painted and parcel-gilt mahogany settees from 1810 (after a design by Percier and Fontaine), a pair of Swedish gilt-bronze mid-19th-century porphyry urns, and an early-19th-century German Neoclassical ormolu, and cut-glass 18-light chandelier.

Versace took the Classical past – the symmetrical forms, the near-nakedness, all that gold – to extremes. It’s not surprising to learn that he was inspired as much by the Classical world as by prostitutes (see Richard Martin’s illuminating essay in the Versace catalog of the Costume Institute’s 1997 exhibition).The happy-hooker vibe, in both Versace’s clothing and furnishings Versace produced, made looking at glamour fun and, most importantly, entertaining: It’s easy, and pleasing, to watch celebrities cavorting in their Versace gowns amidst similarly clad gold goddesses. But how have decorators and the public been reacting to Empire deluxe in these casual days of eclecticism? Do we take busts seriously, or plop them around as visual jokes?

“Empire is a departure from 18th-century rococo,” said Roger Prigent, the owner of Malmaison Antiques on East 74th Street, which has the largest collection of Empire furnishings and decorative arts in North America. “Today the Russians are buying Empire, and younger people are indeed interested and buying it, more than in the past – they are mixing it with modern furniture. The clean lines go well together,” he said.

“In the last five years there has been a very strong interest by decorators in Empire and Neoclassical – but there was always a market,” Ms. Whitmire said. “I think Versace brought in perhaps a few more fans, but I wouldn’t say it sparked a trend,” she added. “This taste will never go out of style. It has a certain charm,” Mr. Prigent said. “His legacy is still as strong as it was in 2001.”

Mr. Prigent attended the auction and bid on two Sevres orange tubs from 1763, but when the price soared to $40,800, he backed down. In the past, he sold Versace many of his belongings, and on Saturday, two Prigent Empire beds were on offer.

It was a little eerie entering the exhibition, like the feeling of opening a time capsule before the due date: a glimpse of tomorrow’s history a little too soon. (Versace was murdered almost eight years ago at his South Beach home, Casa Casaurina, the contents of which were sold by Sotheby’s in 2001.) The beds with Versace-designed silk comforters, the Neoclassical lamps, and the hundreds of vases, picked with care – one could sense the presence of the iconic designer in a meaningful way.

Despite the glossy antique furniture, there were moments when evidence of a life well lived seeped through the shiny ormolu, like in the slightly tattered blue upholstery of his bedroom couches and the faint scratches on porcelain dishes. Said Ms. Whitmire, “He bought really good things that will always sell at a premium. He was a great collector.”