I don’t like the “new Versace” by Dario Vitale, the latest so-called fashion prodigy. What I saw Friday evening at the Ambrosian Pinacoteca was not a tribute to the house’s rococo glamour, but a pale attempt to make Versace… ordinary.

Where have the sculptural dresses gone, the Roman sequin armors, along with the sexy thunder that turned every runway into a red carpet? Instead, we were served jeans, sweaters, and vaguely retro vests à la Raf Simons, to put it mildly. A show that looked more like a trendy thrift shop than the world of the “Medusa of Milo.”

Vitale says he wants to get closer to the public. But Versace was never about that—Versace was excess, flamboyance, the unattainable. It was precisely that distance from the everyday that made people dream. Who wants a Versace disguised as an East Village disco for tourists?

You could call it boldness, sure. But boldness is not about renouncing excess—it’s about sublimating it. Here, on the contrary, we witnessed dilution: sex appeal dissolves into the ready-to-wear of Paris Fashion Week’s underbelly, exuberance folds into nostalgia. For me, his Versace didn’t roar—it yawned.

FM