Versace S/S 2026 Milan

[tourbillions]

not as bad as that aerobics teaser we got. was louis vuittton in the mood board but take it back a few decades ago.

 

[ellearchivist]

I think some of the pieces are not so bad. Quite good in fact. What is beyond awful is the styling! It drags everything down and makes it look so try hard. Even Jacob K had more restraint

 

[Denjo]

Maybe we are all forgetting how tacky and far from reality Versace by Donatella was in the latest years. Yes, the gowns, the red carpets, the celebs but any of us would remotely take Versace in consideration for its fashion proposition? I can understand the perplexities here because this is not maybe a perfect collection but after more than twenty years we are finally saying something different, we are looking at another part of the work of Gianni and we watching it with a different lens. This is not a bad job. I don’t think we are in an “ancora” situation here and I think we can work from here. Hope Miuccia don’t mess up everything with this brand. Give people time. More than a collection at least.

 

[LadyJunon]

Vogue's review on this abortion:

Of all the designers with debuts this season, who has the toughest job? Dario Vitale might be at the top of the list. Vitale is the first person not born a Versace to head up the brand. Donatella Versace, who led the company longer than her late brother Gianni, remains at the label as Chief Brand Ambassador. And the house is in the midst of being sold to Prada, the parent company of Miu Miu, where Vitale was until very recently the design director for womenswear.

All that might’ve stymied a designer with less conviction, but Vitale, who’s 42, does not lack for confidence. This was a gutsy first effort, a thorough rethinking of Versace’s place in people’s wardrobes, one that brought it down off the pantheon and put it squarely in the everyday. Vitale said, “mythology started when gods and goddesses were a bit bored of having affairs with themselves, so they descended Mount Olympus to walk among men. It’s not just about an evening gown to the floor”—there were no gowns, in fact. “We make it a little more real. I know a lot of friends who would die to wear an embroidered leather vest, but to go to the disco club, not to go to the Met.”

His idea was to look back at Gianni Versace’s late ’80s designs. Vitale’s mother was a serious collector of the designer’s clothes at the time, though this won’t strike anyone as a mum’s wardrobe, save for some excellent era-appropriate pumps and lady bags. Yes, the cast included models of multiple generations, but the clothes seemed to be skewed squarely at Vitale’s own millennial brethren, with their taste for vintage and penchant for layering. Plus anybody else older or younger and firm of body—that part is important.

Vitale’s Versace is sexy, but in an undone way that breaks with the house’s past: The jersey dresses were Madame Grès-ish coming, but going, they were barely held together above a pair of logo briefs. Tops were cut low on the side like Miami Beach muscle tees, the edges left unfinished; belts on high-waisted jeans were left undone, and sometimes the zippers too. And never before have a chainmail bra top and matching skirt come down a Versace runway with a prim little cashmere cardigan tied around the hips.

It’s been a big week for color in Milan. Vitale’s linen tailoring showed he can mix it up with the best of them: aubergine with orangey red, azure with kelly green. He also had a fresh way of addressing Versace’s famous prints. The idea, he said, was “to do something that almost looks like a wardrobe of our clients, where you have several different printed shirts, and no one is similar to each other. It’s almost like a great states of print.”

We were at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, a gem of a museum apparently never used for a fashion show before that houses the largest collection of Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings and notes, as well as a Caravaggio among its treasures. Vitale said he has a “tormented passion for Caravaggio.” He also has a thing for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, a movie in which the arrival of a mystery man upends a bourgeois household with liberating results. Vitale dressed the museum like a home; even going so far as to put his own bed sheets on a mattress tucked into a corner of one of the rooms. In his reimagining of Versace, he’s cast himself as The Visitor in Teorema. “It’s an awakening,” he said.

 

[FashionPower]

LOL

 

[Mrs.T]

That was supposed to be Versace?

 

[badgalcrush]

Oh wow... Can someone please confirm that Donatella did not attend this show?
No shade to Dario, but how is this supposed to boost sales? How is the Versace customer supposed to identify with this?
As some of us already mentioned, the lack of sex appeal just doesn’t feel right for Versace and I don’t think the brand’s clientele is going to get on board with this new vision
This is the first collection where I don't see a single look making it to the red carpet.
I already miss DV..

 

[style_expert]

The show was styled by Spencer Singer. I had to Google him—turns out he’s mostly a celebrity stylist for the likes of Lily-Rose Depp, Gracie Abrams, and Billie Eilish. What he isn’t, however, is someone with any real experience styling a runway show or collaborating with a designer.
Which explains a lot—because this show was styled atrociously.

Why on earth would you not hire a seasoned, reputable stylist for your debut?
The designs were already weak, but the styling somehow managed to amplify every flaw and make the entire collection look even worse.

 

[blusheels]

Laughable

 

[Scotty]

Laughable

Of course these Instagram shills love it. Have they ever responded negatively to anything? lol.

 

[YohjiAddict]

Whether they did or didn’t like it, they don’t even have the capacity to structure a simple opinion piece on what is it that they like or didn’t like…I don’t know what could be the usefulness of such an opinion? It’s not even witty for the Lord’s sake!

Here’s me hoping the square accounts go the way of the Dodo. I get better “journalism” from the old lady who spies on the neighborhood from her balcony…

 

[MModa]

According to Vanessa Friedman of The New York Times, neither Miuccia Prada nor Donatella Versace attended the show so they would not steal the spotlight.

Source: nytimes.com

 

[disneyrollergirl]

Who “styled” this? Anyone knows?

This is my question. They seem to be keeping pretty quiet

 

[disneyrollergirl]

The show was styled by Spencer Singer. I had to Google him—turns out he’s mostly a celebrity stylist for the likes of Lily-Rose Depp, Gracie Abrams, and Billie Eilish. What he isn’t, however, is someone with any real experience styling a runway show or collaborating with a designer.
Which explains a lot—because this show was styled atrociously.

Why on earth would you not hire a seasoned, reputable stylist for your debut?
The designs were already weak, but the styling somehow managed to amplify every flaw and make the entire collection look even worse.

This explains a lot. The thing that the reviews (Vanessa, Nicole Phelps) aren't commenting on is the actual cut of the pieces. I get you want to do tacky, excessive 80s or whatever, but the cut is bad and unflattering. And secondly, the styling has no finesse. You can do tacky or incongruous but you have to balance with refinement in some way, surely. Especially if you're positioning yourself as a luxury brand.

 

[yslforever]

Oh wow... Can someone please confirm that Donatella did not attend this show?
No shade to Dario, but how is this supposed to boost sales? How is the Versace customer supposed to identify with this?
As some of us already mentioned, the lack of sex appeal just doesn’t feel right for Versace and I don’t think the brand’s clientele is going to get on board with this new vision
This is the first collection where I don't see a single look making it to the red carpet.
I already miss DV..

I do think they are giving up catering to the Versace customers as we knew them, it's deliberate. There are still leather and heels and barocco silks shirts, but they don't seem interested on clinging on that clientele.

Red carpet doesn't make sales, plenty of houses are barely on red carpets and performing, Miu Miu for instance.

They clearly want new gen-Z customers.

 

[yslforever]

A good review to balance the thread:

At Versace, Dario Vitale’s Debut Gets Down and Dirty

Dario Vitale reinvents the brand with sex, suggestion and a bit of fun.

www.nytimes.com

 

[donyan]

I think this is quite a good collection, considering that he had the impossible task of having to follow both Gianni and Donatella. It's a little to casual and merchandised, but on the whole this is not as bad as everybody is making it out to be.

 

[gazebo]

Can someone please post the Vanessa Friedman review?

 

[vogue28]

VOGUE.COM

 

[Diggi]

Looks like a chemsex / 80s dress up party in Neukölln