VERSACE SS26

At Milan Fashion Week, Dario Vitale’s first act as creative director of Versace opts for intimacy. No traditional catwalk: instead, a journey through the halls of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, as if the audience were entering Gianni and Donatella’s home at night. The bed is unmade, striped shirts left on the covers, glasses half-full, and TVs still on. The idea isn’t a show-and-spectacle, but a lively presentation, almost as if permission had been requested from the family. The setting is a letter quoting Keats’s romantic pathos: words that restrain rather than declare.

Vitale’s gaze begins with the archives. The 1980s are reinterpreted without saccharine nostalgia: passionate red, hopeful green, denim blue, black leather, and metallic threads. There’s a hint of Warhol filtered through pop culture, but Versace’s signature sensuality shifts: less of a shout, more of a restrained tension. A composed front, a revealing back. Undone belts dangle, logoed elastic bands emerge, socks are hastily pulled on. Sex remains the brand’s grammar, but here it opts for the off-screen.

The look construction focuses on styling: jeans and embroidered patchwork vests, cardigans tied at the hips, blazers that get caught on the belt, diamond patterns that open like accordions. High waists, cropped jackets, a Miami Vice more fun than crime. The casting direction alternates streetwise faces with celebrities (Alex Consani stands out): belonging not as a social class, but as a shared feeling.

So much for the picture. Now for the point.

This debut feels more like a test of atmosphere than a statement. The narrative is coherent, the staging effective, but the visual effect is unresolved: many references, some clever archival tricks, little formal risk. The energy remains suspended, like the scene of the morning after, undecided whether to transform into a new story or remain a souvenir.

It’s reasonable to expect more. Vitale has written convincing pieces elsewhere over the years, with a quick eye and clear taste. Here, the promise is there, but the impact hasn’t yet been felt. Versace today needs a clear trajectory: to define what to keep from its DNA and what, finally, to move forward. The debut conveys a sense of belonging and sensitivity, but not yet a direction.

Provisional verdict: good script, poor editing. If it was a calling card, it says “I know how to live in the house”; now we need a new room. Because audiences recognize second-look films in a second, while new ones have been waiting for years.