Dario Vitale is the creative director of Emporio Armani, the house announced on Wednesday. He will also hold the position of creative director of Giorgio Armani Accessories and will begin work with immediate effect.
Vitale said: “I am honored to take on this dual role across Emporio Armani and Giorgio Armani, and deeply grateful to Silvana and Leo for welcoming me into their world. Armani has a powerful legacy and unmistakable design language; a heritage that has spanned decades and shaped the history of fashion. I approach all of this with a deep sense of responsibility and excitement as we build upon that rich foundation, defining a new era together.”
The much-rumored announcement marks the first time that Armani Group, whose founder and owner Giorgio Armani died last year, has placed an external hire in creative charge of one of its lines. For Vitale, however, this is his second such distinction: in April 2025, he began work as the first non-Versace family member ever to oversee design at Versace, only to exit eight months later following Prada Group’s acquisition of the company. Prada Group was also Vitale’s former employer at Miu Miu.
Founded in 1981, Emporio Armani was conceived by Giorgio Armani as a lower-priced diffusion label, initially strongly focused on denim, that would also serve as a consumer conduit towards his eponymous mainline. “Emporio is my vision of fashion explored from another angle, which is more metropolitan and extremely transversal in terms of generation,” Armani once said.
Today’s appointment marks just such a generational leap. Vitale was born in 1983, making him only slightly older than Armani was when he founded his company in 1975. For most of its existence, Emporio Armani was helmed by Armani himself, alongside Giorgio Armani, Armani Privé, and the rest of his sprawling universe of signature design. His final collection for Emporio, Spring/Summer 2026, was presented in Milan after his death on September 4, 2025, at age 91. The most recent collection was co-designed by Armani’s designated creative heirs, his niece Silvana Armani, 71, and long-term partner Leo Dell’Orco, 73.
In a joint statement, Armani and Dell’Orco said: “Emporio Armani is much more than a line for us: it is a reality to which we are deeply connected, having followed and shared its journey since the very beginning. Emporio was born as a space of freedom, experimentation and energy, and we are convinced that Dario’s arrival in our team, as a talent already established on the international stage, will interpret its spirit with respect and authenticity.”
Vitale arrives at Emporio following a period of such professional tumult that his future employment became a cause célèbre. His first and last collection for Versace, Spring/Summer 2026, was presented in Milan in September 2025 and met with significant industry acclaim.
Observers celebrated Vitale’s ability to reconnect the house with the youthful, sexually charged energy associated with founder Gianni Versace while establishing a bold, culturally contemporary vocabulary of his own. The collection has since been pulled extensively by stylists for magazine covers and red-carpet appearances, giving its relatively small body of work an unusually long afterlife. The sequinned bra from look 50, in particular, has earned considerable mileage.
Dario’s Versace SS26 collection.
Photo: Courtesy of Versace
