After 27 years at the helm of Versace, Donatella is stepping down. In a similar vein to the “ain’t Laurent without Yves” rhetoric that did the rounds when Hedi Slimane dropped the founder’s first name in 2012, our knee-jerk reaction was “ain’t Versace without Donatella.”
Indeed, Donatella leaves some tough shoes to fill. The 69-year-old icon has become synonymous with the stylistically ostentatious brand over the better part of thirty years, and alongside her brother, Gianni Versace (who founded and headed up the brand for 19 years), is behind the only Versace we’ve ever known. So who has Capri Holdings, the juggernaut behind Versace, deemed worthy of stepping into them?
The newly anointed chief creative officer is Dario Vitale, a 41-year-old Naples-born designer, who, tbf, has a pretty extensive CV. After graduating from Milan’s Instituto Maringoni, Vitale cut his teeth at DSquared, before a brief stint at Bottega Veneta. In 2010 he found a home at Miu Miu (where he’s remained, until now), where he worked alongside the former design director of both Miu Miu and Prada, Fabio Zambernardi, and Mrs Prada herself.
Given how closely Vitale worked with Miuccia Prada and Zambernardi, it’s hard to know which Miu Miu moments of the past decade were his brain children: but given his wide-reaching title as the brand’s design and image director, it was likely a lot of them. The past few years have seen the brand become the it girl go to, and have seen its sales numbers mushroom. Versace, on the other hand, has seen an overall revenue decline.
If we were to take a guess we would say that we will likely see a transfer of some of Miu Miu’s cool girl energy and ability to produce some of the must-have, stand-out garments and accessories of the season (aka the micro minis) transferred to Versace, as well as a switch-up to more left-field talent and ambassadors, a la Chloé Sevingey and Mia Goth, over Versace’s tendency towards longstanding supermodels and super-famous popstars.
We’d also be remiss not to note that Vitale joining Versace tracks with the rumours that The Prada Group (Miu Miu’s parent company) is acquiring the brand. Tbh, what better way to extend creative control over Versace and shape it into The Prada Group image, than to appoint someone who’s already part of the Prada furniture as its CCO?
Homepage image via LVMH©
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See: Donatella Versace steps down and announces her successor, Dario Vitale, at Versace
