“Miami News,” by William Norwich, was originally published in the April 1993 issue of Vogue.

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It's been official for two years at least: Miami's hip, hot South Beach section is the American Riviera. But South Beach isn't a place where you park your Vuitton with the nanny. You won't leave after a holiday here remembering the facials, the fat-free feed, or the hydrotherapy—unless you apply that last term to a lover's kiss in the teeming turquoise surf during a disco dawn.

Miami is a cheap date.

"It's like the fifties in Capri," says designer Gianni Versace, who is renovating a 1920s sun palace here and whose ode in book form, South Beach Stories (Leonardo-De Luca, Rome), is out this month. "Ever

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