Former Miu Miu design director for ready-to-wear Dario Vitale takes the Emporio reins. Not a moment too soon

What is notable about Dario Vitale’s newest appointment as the creative director of Emporio Armani and Giorgio Armani Accessories is that he is stepping, once more, into a business owned by a family. First, there was Miu Miu, largely family-owned even when parent Prada Group went public in 2011 by listing a 20% stake on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, then Versace, family owned and run until after his appointment when it was sold to Prada, and now Armani, still largely a family entity. In all three cases, he is entering brands whose identities were historically shaped not by dispersed corporate management, but by powerful founding families or family-like creative dynasties. That is a different trajectory from many contemporary creative directors, who move between brands owned by giant conglomerates where the founders are long gone and the houses function primarily as a corporate asset needing massive aesthetic correction every half or full decade to be “new”.

It is tempting to wonder if this suggests that Mr Vitale is a designer who has a flair in navigating the delicate, insular politics of houses driven by founding DNA rather than cold, corporate conglomerate spreadsheets. Then again, he did not exactly win Donatella Versace’s approval, at least not sufficiently to entice her to attend his debut show. It was rumoured that, while she was in Milan at the time, she whiled away the hours with Anna Wintour. Ms Versace’s 28-year reign of polished high-glamour was so thoroughly dismantled by a collection so raw and marginally geeky that she was determined to ignore it. In less than six months, his tenure expired before the milk in the atelier fridge. Behind the scenes, it was, as many back then said, “complicated”. But the reality was, Versace was bought by Prada and then within days of the acquisition being finalized, Mr Vitale was out. As we saw it, Versace became the stripped-down evidence that succession plans in modern luxury can be astonishingly fragile.

He did not exactly win Donatella Versace’s approval, at least not sufficiently to entice her to attend his debut show

When his Versace appointment was announced, it was accompanied by enormous fanfare as the creative reins had never left the family bloodline. At Miu Miu, Mr Vitale was fast becoming the brand’s golden goose, much to the quiet relief of a parent company whose almighty nylon was carrying the heavy financial lifting of the group. Some of those propositions were etched into the memory permanently: the collegiate polo shirts, the Nicole-Kidman-endorsed micro-mini skirts and shorts, those wayward board shorts, and the much copied New Balance collaborations. The fleeting Versace tenure, therefore, offered no window to gauge how he might realistically pivot the house. The debut collection was devoured by the chronically fashionable, only to be starved of any actual vitality. Might the Emporio Armani appointment prove that you can anoint an heir without the birthright?

The biggest challenge Mr Vitale faces is how to capture Giorgio Armani when the designer is no longer in the studio? Does he even need to? How much of Balenciaga today offers even a faint whiff of the past? It is possible that the Armani team saw enough in his Miu Miu work and his Versace debut collection to conclude that the dismissal was primarily a consequence of ownership politics rather than creative failure. Yet, Armani is taking a chance on a designer whose most recent leadership chapter ended before a box of his business cards could be used up. One collection is not enough to determine whether someone can successfully evolve a major luxury house over years. This makes Dario Vitale compelling to watch: He arrives not as a proven long-term creative director, but as a figure suspended between promise and interruption.

Photo: emporioarmani/Instagram