Versace Embodied sets the tone for Vitale's direction

"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. 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."

"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. Literary and performative elements push the project further."

Versace Embodied, directed by Creative Director Dario Vitale, activates the house archive through sequential chapters featuring artists, writers, and performers. The first chapter blends photography, drawing, poetry, dance, and archival material to revisit and evolve the house's foundations around Via Gesù 12 and the bronze Medusa. Contributions include mythic emblem photography, Southern Italian black-and-white portraits, Steven Meisel's 1997 Istante catalogue, Collier Schorr's intimate illustrations, and a photograph of the Bronzi di Riace. Literary and performative works include Eileen Myles's Put It Back, Olly Elyte's Ponyboy communal dances in New York and Los Angeles, and a portrait capturing youthful independence. The archive is treated as porous and active, open to re-examination and reshaping.

Read at Documentjournal