Gone Too Soon: Dario Vitale’s Versace

On July 15th, 1997, Gianni Versace was murdered on the front steps of his sprawling Miami Beach mansion at exactly 8:45 in the morning, in what has since become not only one of the most devastating fashion fatalities in recent memory, but also, in a true cinematic homage to the man himself, the subject of a season of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace.

Fittingly, among those who came to mourn him at his memorial were Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, perhaps two of the most publicly wronged women of their generation, and subject to an operatic obsession even more intense than that of the man they gathered to bury.

Bizarrely enough, it also made sense. Versace – the man and the brand – has always understood – and deliberately or not, championed – wronged women.

Growing up in the Southern Italian countryside scattered with Hellenic ruins, Gianni’s choice of the Medusa monogram – that unapologetic, unsmiling gaze, set in a circle of Greek meandros – spoke not of the monster that history made her out to be, but of the woman underneath. “Whoever falls in love with Medusa,” Donatella once said of her brother’s reasoning, “can’t flee from her.”

It’s for the woman – or women – you simply can’t look away from: the Linda, Cindy, Christy, and Naomi of the Freedom! ’90 finale of Versace Fall 1991, Elizabeth Hurley in the bodacious safety pin dress at the Four Weddings and a Funeral premiere, or, for example, the internet breaking plunging green jungle-print gown JLo slipped on for the 2000 Grammys.

Heck, even Blake Lively – fresh off the settlement of her Justin Baldoni lawsuit – rolled up to the steps of the Met earlier this week in archival Versace!

Clearly, the cultural cache – and the design brief – is vast. Almost too vast, some would deem, for its recently departed creative director, Dario Vitale.

Eight Months in Milan

What do Walter Chiapponi, Justine O’Shea, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, and Alberto Caliri have in common? Well, aside from the fact that they’re all designers (duh!) – at Blumarine, Brioni, Ann Demeulemeester, and Missoni respectively – they were also in charge of creative directorships that lasted less than a year (Chiapponi’s ill-fated stint at Blumarine was a mere 4 months!)

Now, while Dario Vitale has (blessedly) not managed to usurp Chiapponi’s record (yet), he hadn’t quite anticipated that, 8 months into his tenure at Versace, on a bleak December day last year, the brand would release the following statement:

“We would like to sincerely thank Dario for his outstanding contribution to the development of the brand’s creative strategy during this transition period, and we wish him all the very best in his future endeavors.”

Let us take a moment, dear reader, to sit with this statement, issued by Lorenzo Bertelli, two days into his newly installed chairmanship following the acquisition by Prada Group. 

But it’s in this context that Bertelli’s statement feels particularly scathing. Outstanding contribution: the kind of phrase that appears on a report card where the teacher has absolutely nothing to say. Development of the brand’s creative strategy: note the strategy, not the brand itself. 

And future endeavors? A farewell possessing the warmth and specificity of a corporate postcard addressed “Dear valued employee….”

The House That He Walked Into

“I see my job as one of provoking a reaction — sometimes any kind of reaction, ”Vitale said in an interview. And as the 42-year-old – with fifteen years at Miu Miu under his belt and a name largely unknown outside the industry’s innermost circles — walked out to take his bow after his debut (and subsequently, only) presentation at the hushed, fresco-lined halls of Milan’s Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, he had provoked a reaction, alright. 

“This was a gutsy first effort,” wrote Vogue’s Nicole Phelps, “one that brought it down off the pantheon and put it squarely in the everyday.” Hanan Besovic, of the Instagram account @ideservecouture, heaved a sigh of relief: “This was the first time I really understood the brand.” Suzy Menkes called the effort “chaotic but energetic. A Versace for the next generation? Perhaps…”

Remarkable as it may be, it appears the brand bid farewell to a man who had, by most accounts, just delivered the most exciting debut collection of the entire Spring/Summer 2026 season.

High-waisted jeans hiked up to the hip. Beaded brassieres and studded leather vests that recalled the archival Atelier at its most brazenly glamorous. Repurposed prints from Gianni’s 1991 James Dean and Marilyn Monroe dress – refracted through Andy Warhol, naturally. And the bags – oh the bags! 

Luscious leather bumbags and the splayed-open Pivot buckets emblazoned with the tell-tale Medusa. Structured satchels and colorful flaps, glinting gold chains peeking through like the unbuttoned shirt on a mafioso’s hairy chest.

“It’s almost like Coca-Cola,” Vitale said backstage, “Everybody knows Versace. So I asked myself: what is the spirit of Versace beyond the clothes?”

But it was also that same unbridled, chaotic sex appeal that made it divisive. Blogger Navaz Batliwalla of Disneyrollergirl bemoaned: “Aesthetically it’s a hot mess.” Rachel Tashjian called it, “A rare cry of sincere, skillfully made bad taste.” Then again, Tashjian noted, “Any designer willing to be crude is always going to squirm under the thumb of the chilly Milanese fashion establishment.” Notably, Donatella was not in attendance. “Donatella’s intention,” said a representative of the Milanese fashion establishment, “was to give Dario his space.”

He had it for exactly two days.

The House That Gianni Built

In a seedy, run-down, roadside motel – peppered with dusty windows, hardened redwood walls, and red carpeting so grimy “you could write ‘I want you’ in its layers of dirt”- Dario Vitale’s inaugural Versace campaign, Room Six, comes to life, less Casa Casuarina and more melancholic arthouse foreplay. But as the imaginary mise-en-scène unfolds with a kind of sun-bleached, post-coital unease, it offers something hitherto unfamiliar for the house of Medusa: sex as a suggestion, rather than a spectacle.

Really, it ties back to a childhood trip 10-year-old Vitale took to the Louvre, laying eyes – or more accurately, catching the slight of the Mona Lisa’s upturned lip. “I still left the room thinking I’d seen her, ”he recalls “It was almost more about the idea of being in her presence than actually seeing her.”

And herein lies the crux of Vitale’s vision: “With this project, I wanted to ‘see’ Versace without seeing Versace — to create something that was more about the feeling and the experience of a Versace attitude.”

But Versace, for all its mythological grandeur, is young. Founded in 1978 – a mere infant next to Gucci’s 105 years, Prada’s 113, and Hermès’ positively geriatric age of 189 – Gianni’s Versace is culture-defining, internet-breaking, scandal-inducing. Rarely does it dabble in the business of suggestion.

Of course, it has mellowed since the 2018 sale to Capri Holdings, nudging it towards a quiet, luxury-like restraint. But with Donatella at its helm, it still retained at its core the unapologetic molto-sexy, gilded excess. Vitale’s attempt, by contrast, appeared to peer at Versace through Prada’s intellectualized lens.

And while it’s undeniable that this infused freshness into the house, opening it up and making it palatable to a new wave of fashion folks, when has the Versace woman ever conformed to conformities? Like Carrie Bradshaw, yet another unlikely Versace poster-child, mused, “Maybe some women aren’t meant to be tamed. Maybe they need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with.” And maybe, just maybe, that someone is Pieter Mulier?