Dario Vitale's First and Last Versace Ready-to-Wear Campaign

It is a bittersweet collection of photographs that documents a vision of the house that ended almost as quickly as it began. Coming only two months after the Prada Group’s sudden acquisition of the brand and Dario Vitale’s subsequent departure, these images serve as a haunting reminder of the Versace that could have been.

Dario Vitale looked toward the accessible soul of the 1990s, specifically the long-dormant Versace Jeans sub-label. To capture this shift, the house commissioned a triad of photographers, Steven Meisel, Tania Franco Klein, and Frank Lebon to translate Dario Vitale’s Versace. The result is a dialogue between fashion royalty and the underground, creating a cinematic landscape where the Medusa logo feels grounded, and fresh.

Frank Lebon’s contributions bring a raw, domestic intimacy to the brand, featuring snapshots that feel like the morning after a legendary party. His images of models in green underpinnings or slouchy denim emphasize a wearable honesty that the house rarely explored in previous decades.

Tania Franco Klein adds a layer of darkened glamour, stripping away the heavy logos and crystals in favor of a cinematic tension that blurs the line between a high-fashion shoot and a film still. These perspectives offer a version of Versace that breathes with the rhythm of daily life rather than the flash of a paparazzi bulb.

The heart of the campaign remains the work of Steven Meisel, the man who helped build the original Versace legend alongside Gianni Versace. His photographs for Spring-Summer 2026 are a vibrant nod to the iconic denim ads of the nineties, brimming with color and eclectic styling that demands the eye to linger. In these compositions, Steven Meisel captures the models from a high angle, arranging them in a layered tableau that evokes both the intricate density of Roman bas-reliefs and the legendary spirit of Richard Avedon’s Fall 1982 Versace campaign.

By pairing Meisel with contemporary voices like Lebon and Klein, Vitale proved he had the depth to honor the past while aggressively courting the future. It was a bold, intelligent start that promised a new chapter of commercial relevance and artistic grit.

Today, as these images circulate through the digital ether, they represent a closed chapter. Dario Vitale’s eight-month residency was a lightning strike, bright, shocking, and over far too soon. While the Prada Group moves toward a new direction for the house, this campaign stands as a permanent record of a revolutionary pivot. Dario Vitale may have been denied the chance to evolve his vision, but with this final campaign, he ensures that his brief time at Versace will be remembered as a moment of pure, untapped potential.