Versace Embodied: much more than a fashion campaign
In September 2025, Versace chose not to begin its new creative chapter with a traditional advertising campaign. The house envisioned Versace Embodied, a multidisciplinary cultural project designed to explore the core of its identity: the bodies, places, symbols, artists, and tensions that have fueled its aesthetic language for decades.
The distinction is crucial. Versace itself defines Embodied as "not a campaign, but a conversation" with those who participate in contemporary culture. Photographs, poetry, illustrations, music, film, and pieces from the Versace archives are all presented on an equal footing. The goal is no longer simply to showcase a garment: it's about evoking a feeling and questioning what makes an image, an attitude, or a body instantly recognizable as "Versace." This shift in perspective deserves to be emphasized. In an industry where the product naturally remains central to the business model, Versace Embodied deliberately chooses to begin elsewhere.
Dario Vitale explained to Vogue France that he wanted to "show Versace without actually seeing Versace." No garment or accessory designed by the designer structured the project. The focus was more on feelings, experiences, and the brand's cultural construction than on a seasonal lookbook.
This approach extends a historical characteristic of the house, which can be found more broadly in our dossier dedicated to theworld and current events of Versace : since Gianni Versace, fashion, music, photography, celebrity and popular culture have rarely been considered as separate territories.
A project built around the Versace identity
The formula used by Versace sums up its ambition: to explore the house through its past, present, and future. The project therefore returns to the fundamentals rather than trends.
He evokes Medusa,Versace's Milanese history, the Mediterranean, the body, sensuality, intimacy, and archives. But these heritage elements are not simply reproduced. They become materials offered to contemporary artists.
Versace emphasizes three values in particular: strength, rigor, and uncompromising sexuality. To these is added a recurring duality between body and mind, between control and instinct, between classicism and transgression.
This is probably where Versace Embodied becomes most interesting from a brand strategy perspective. A luxury house with a highly recognizable heritage can easily fall into repeating its own symbols. Embodied, on the contrary, chooses to ask other perspectives to shift them. The archive is no longer a museum: it becomes a living material.
Camille Vivier photographs Versace's original Medusa
The starting point is almost architectural. French photographer Camille Vivier travels to 12 Via Gesù in Milan, the historic address of the Versace fashion house and atelier, to photograph the bronze Medusa that adorns the building's entrance. This Medusa is not simply a logo affixed to a product. It refers to one of the house's most powerful signatures.
Versace explains that Camille Vivier, known for her dreamlike photographic style, also photographs objects from the house's archives. The project thus creates a relationship between mythology, place, memory, and contemporary creation. The choice is revealing: to tell the story ofVersace's future, Dario Vitale begins with a door.
He doesn't seek to immediately reproduce the baroque motifs or spectacular silhouettes associated with the brand. He returns to the symbol that, literally, welcomes those who enter his world.
Andrea Modica: the Mediterranean rather than the spectacular
A different perspective, a different rhythm. American photographer Andrea Modica created the series Summer in the South of ItalyHer black and white portraits depict young subjects in southern Italy and establish a direct link with Versace's Mediterranean roots. Black and white might seem almost paradoxical when associated with a fashion house famous for its gold, baroque prints, and saturated colors. It is precisely this contrast that enriches the project.
Versace is not defined solely by its maximalism. Behind the brilliance lies a geography, a sensuality of climate, a connection to Antiquity and southern Italy. Andrea Modica reveals this dimension without resorting to the house's immediately spectacular vocabulary.
This Mediterranean reference takes on particular significance when one remembers that Gianni Versace was born in 1946 in Reggio Calabria. TheGreco-Roman imagery, the sculpting of the body, and the references to Magna Graecia thus constitute a cultural depth for the brand that predates its status as an international fashion icon.
Eileen Myles: poetry becomes physical
Eileen Myles ' contribution takes Versace even further beyond the strict realm of fashion. The American poet and novelist penned Put It Back in 2025 , a text conceived as an instinctive response to Versace's intimacy and physicality .
The brand describes its writing as personal, transgressive, and difficult to categorize. In this context, poetry is not added as an intellectual supplement to a series of images; it directly contributes to defining the brand.
The choice is consistent with Embodied's philosophy : if Versace wants to speak of desire, strength, or sexuality, clothing is not the only available language. A text can express what a silhouette suggests; a photograph can convey what the text deliberately leaves undefined. It is this interplay between disciplines that gives the project its meaning.
Schorr necklace: representing intimacy and sexuality
Artist and photographer Collier Schorr contributes a series of original illustrations. Versace describes his work as a direct look at intimacy and sexuality, two dimensions historically central to the house's representation of the body. At Versace, the body has never merely served as a canvas for clothing; it is an integral part of the message.
From figure-hugging silhouettes to plays on cutouts, leather, metal, and knitwear, the house's vocabulary has been built around a deliberate conception of sensuality. With Collier Schorr, this theme momentarily leaves the cut and the catwalk to become drawing and representation.
This translation is important: theVersace DNA appears as a cultural grammar rather than a simple sum of iconic products.
Olly Elyte and Ponyboy: when the body becomes language
The project also features Olly Elyte, model, musician, and dancer, alongside Ponyboy. Versace presents this contribution, developed between New York and Los Angeles in August 2025, as a space for freedom of physical expression, connection, and community through dance. Movement thus becomes a new way of interpreting Versace. This corporeal dimension is fundamental to Embodied, even in its name: "embodied" refers to what is embodied, experienced physically, inscribed in a body. A fashion house might seek to showcase what one wears. Here, Versace seeks more to reveal a way of being.
Photography, poetry, music and film: why this mix works
Theappeal of Versace Embodied lies less in the number of disciplines involved than in their lack of hierarchy. Photography does not illustrate poetry. Poetry does not explain photography. Dance does not serve as a backdrop for clothing. Archives are not treated as mere historical references. All these forms participate in the same narrative system.
Versace explicitly speaks of photographs, poetry, art, music and film which combine with objects from his archives in order to bring out emotional and physical truths.
In today's luxury landscape, this strategy has clear appeal. Major brands no longer build their desirability solely through their collections. They operate within an environment encompassing exhibitions, archives, films, music, design, books, and artistic collaborations. Luxury thus becomes a producer of visual culture. Versace Embodied takes this logic particularly far, as the product temporarily recedes to allow the brand's identity to become the subject itself.
The Versace archives: heritage or creative laboratory?
This is probably one of the most strategic questions of the project. How to exploit extraordinary archives without turning a house into a repetition of its golden age?
Versace possesses an almost unparalleled visual heritage: Medusa, Greca, baroque prints, metallic mesh, sculptural sensuality, fashion photography, supermodels, and Italian glamour. The temptation to directly reference these elements is constant.
Embodied suggests another method: returning to the reason why these symbols became powerful. The Medusa is then no longer simply a motif. It evokes fascination. The close-up cut becomes an interrogation of desire. The Mediterranean becomes a cultural territory. Fashion photography becomes a reflection on the power of the image. Heritage thus ceases to be merely visual and becomes conceptual.
This question of transmission is particularly visible today in Paris with the Gianni Versace Retrospective, which places the founder's work in a broader history of creation, image and popular culture.
From Versace Embodied to the Spring-Summer 2026 collection
Embodied takes on its full meaning when placed within Dario Vitale's chronology. Just a few days after its launch, Versace presented the collection Spring-Summer 2026, Vitale's first collection for the house.
Versace officially describes this collection as an exploration of its essence, designed to respond to contemporary realities, centered around desire, sensuality, and curiosity, with humanity at its core. The connection to Embodied is clear.
The cultural project initially posed the questions: What is Versace? Where does its strength lie? What remains when the product is temporarily removed? The fashion show could then provide a sartorial answer.
In 2026, Versace explicitly presented its Spring-Summer campaign as a continuation of the approach inaugurated a few months earlier by Versace Embodied, proof that the project was not just an artistic interlude but rather the starting point of a broader brand vocabulary.
A project that has now become historic in Versace's transition
Looking back to 2026, Versace Embodied has taken on an added dimension. The project was associated with Dario Vitale, whose time at Versace was very short. The change in ownership of the fashion house, which came under the control of the Prada Group in December 2025, followed by the appointment of Pieter Mulier as Chief Creative Officer, effective July 1, 2026, opened a new chapter.
To understand this transition, our analysis of Versace under the Prada Group era and our deciphering of Pieter Mulier's appointment at Versace allow us to place Embodied in a broader strategic movement.
This doesn't make the project obsolete. On the contrary. Embodied becomes a particularly interesting document of a time when Versace was seeking to redefine its identity after several decades dominated by Donatella Versace's vision. The question remains entirely relevant: how to evolve Versace without neutralizing Versace?
Versace: fashion house or cultural player?
This is ultimately where the value of Versace Embodied lies. Major luxury brands now possess resources comparable to those of true cultural institutions: vast archives, international networks of designers, audiovisual production capabilities, architectural spaces, editorial influence, and access to some of the most important figures of their time. But having these resources isn't enough. For a cultural project to succeed, it must offer more than just a backdrop for a commercial campaign.
Embodied possesses precisely this characteristic: clothing is not its focus. Versace momentarily agrees to tell its story through other people, other practices, and other perspectives.
This approach allows the house to transform its codes into open questions: what is sensuality today? How to represent power? What role does the body play? What does Versace's Mediterranean heritage mean? How to keep an archive alive without freezing it? These are all questions that explain why the project remains relevant beyond the season in which it was born.
And what about sustainability in all of this?
It is important to correct a common misconception here. Versace Embodied is not presented by the fashion house as a sustainability project. Official communications about the project focus on culture, expression, identity, archives, and the body.
Versace also pursues separate environmental initiatives. The brand's Sustainability section includes Versace Upcycle, creations incorporating upcycling, actions related to materials, and several environmental commitments. In 2025, Versace also announced the adoption of 9,000 coral fragments in Bora Bora as part of its support for Coral Gardeners.
This distinction is important: artificially associating Embodied with an environmental approach risks creating a promise that the project's official documentation does not make. For a luxury brand, the authenticity of its message also depends on this precision.
Why does Versace Embodied remain relevant in 2026?
Versace Embodied may not have been the most spectacular of the house's public statements. But that's precisely what makes it so compelling. In a world accustomed to red carpet gowns, gold, prints, celebrities, and the immediate power of the logo, Versace chose, for a moment, to return to the questions that precede the product. Medusa. The body. The Mediterranean. Desire. Image. Intimacy. Freedom. Archives.
In other words, everything that allows a Versace garment to become more than just a garment. The project also demonstrates a profound evolution in contemporary luxury : desirability is no longer built solely through the accumulation of objects or campaigns. It also rests on a fashion house's ability to develop a coherent cultural territory, rich enough to be interpreted by photographers, poets, dancers, and artists without losing its identity.
With Versace Embodied, the house wasn't simply trying to produce new images. It was seeking to understand why, nearly half a century after its founding in 1978, certain images continue to be recognizable as Versace even before the name appears. And in a luxury market where attention has become as valuable as the product itself, this ability to be instantly identifiable while remaining culturally vibrant is undoubtedly one of the most precious assets a house can possess.
Official French sources
- Versace France – Versace Embodied, official presentation of the cultural project and its universe.
- Versace France – News and Projects, official section in which Versace Embodied is presented as a “cultural force embodying the spirit that characterizes the House”.
- Versace France – Sustainability, official documentation of the house’s environmental initiatives, separate from Versace Embodied.
