Versace has launched Versace Embodied, a project directed by newly appointed Creative Director Dario Vitale that puts the house’s archive and collaborators in active dialogue. The cultural initiative unfolds as a sequence of chapters, each built around artists, writers, and performers whose work resonates with Versace’s codes of strength, rigour, and sexuality.

Left: Photography by Camille Vivier. Right: Photography by Andrea Modica.

The project’s first chapter combines photography, drawing, poetry, dance, and archival material to revisit the house’s foundations while showing how they continue to evolve. The starting point is Via Gesù 12 in Milan, where the bronze Medusa still marks the original atelier door. Camille Vivier photographs the emblem, applying her signature mythic style. Andrea Modica’s contribution of black-and-white portraits of young people in Southern Italy reconnects the brand to its Mediterranean roots.

Left: Photography by Steven Meisel. Right: Artwork by Collier Schorr

Steven Meisel’s Istante catalogue, shot in New York in Spring/Summer 1997, underscores his long collaboration with the house. Collier Schorr adds illustrations that confront intimacy and sexuality with a direct, personal gaze. A photograph of the Bronzi di Riace, classical sculptures first exhibited in 1981, extends this lineage of physicality and display.

Left: Bronzi di Riace. Right: Artwork by Eileen Myles. Right:

Literary and performative elements push the project further. Poet and novelist Eileen Myles contributes Put It Back, a text that engages with themes of intimacy and desire. In New York and Los Angeles, Olly Elyte organizes Ponyboy, a communal dance project emphasizing connection and freedom of expression. Stef Mitchell photographs Binx Walton on a bike, capturing youthful independence in a straightforward portrait.

Photography by Stef Mitchell.

Through these artworks, Versace Embodied foregrounds the values that define the house. It looks to the archive as porous and active rather than a static memory, with material that can be re-examined and reshaped by new voices. Vitale’s framing keeps the project anchored in Versace’s history while leaving space for experimentation, keeping the house’s identity open to interpretation and renewal.