Dario Vitale’s Delicious Versace Debut
Anders Christian Madsen reviews Dario Vitale’s debut collection for Versace, for Spring/Summer 2026.
If the casual jeans-and-blazer combo Dario Vitale dressed Julia Roberts and Amanda Seyfried in for the Venice Biennale had us thinking we were in for a new quiet-luxury Versace, boy, were we wrong. His debut show, held in the decadent but homely salons of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana gallery on Friday night, was a sensory cornucopia of memories and characters, and the love and lust embodied by Versace. In the weeks leading up to the show, Vitale released a number of projects commissioned from artists asked to convey their idea of the house. It underlined the fact that Versace isn’t really a fashion brand as much as it’s a culture, a philosophy, and a way of life. The creative canon Gianni and Donatella conceived is deeply interwoven with the lives of the people it moved and continues to move. Like any other culture or precious piece of art, it should be handled with sensitivity and soul.
Vitale, who came from Miu Miu, was appointed Creative Director of Versace in February, taking over from Donatella, who now serves as Chief Brand Ambassador. Shortly after, the Prada Group acquired the house from Capri Holdings. As the first non-family member to lead Versace, he’s got a pretty delicate task at hand. “It’s something that belongs to culture. It’s something that you know by heart,” he said of the house after the show. “The beauty of this brand is that everyone has a soft spot for it because it is really like Coca-Cola.” Because Versace means so much to so many of us, the challenge for Vitale wasn’t necessarily to show reverence through references to Gianni and Donatella’s work but to honor it as a feeling, a lifestyle, and a culture. And while you could certainly list the references he drew on, from the empowering silhouette to the graphics and the iconography, it didn’t feel as important as reveling in the familiar energy of it all. It felt good.
VERSACE
Vitale employed the collective and individual associations we all have of the house in a largely 1980s silhouette in which every garment was imbued with memory. Beyond the styling that turned the models into characters—quiffed and feathered hair, mustaches, timeworn makeup—the clothes felt lived-in: full of soul. Bright, sporty colors appeared slightly paled by time, sharp (but rarely very oversized) tailored shoulders looked settled in, and the crotches of trousers were yanked up like something out of a 1980s gay bar. That spirit increased as the show progressed, and elements of Americana, from metal yokes to Western embroideries, infused the look with a vintage glamor that ultimately set a very sexy tone for the collection. “Sexuality, to me, is not even the sex itself. It’s more the experience of it; the souvenir the day after,” Vitale reflected.
A cornerstone of its culture, he conveyed Versace’s innate sexiness in every look, infusing cuts and styling with sensibilities that traversed the suggestive through the sultry and seedy. Often, his sexiness felt more like the way people have historically used Versace to look and feel sexy—personal, intimate, provocative—rather than the loud-and-proud way Versace has presented its sexiness on the runway and in campaigns. That transition was probably the most crucial move Vitale could make in his—and the Prada Group’s—quest to make Versace attractive to new generations, who need to be seduced by the house and form their own relationship with it. Well, that, and the great many number of little jackets, dresses, cardigans, vests, and ties that had the immediate, approachable ease and desirability to them that Vitale has been mastering in his former job at Miu Miu, whose sales have been skyrocketing in recent years.
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