Dario Vitale Appointed Creative Director Of Emporio Armani

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 honoured 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-rumoured 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.

That was not enough to spare Vitale from forces apparently beyond his control. Prada Group completed its €1.25 billion acquisition of Versace from Capri Holdings late in 2025; Vitale’s departure was confirmed later that week.

Before leaving to go to Versace, Vitale had spent 14 years at Miu Miu, starting in 2010 and eventually becoming design director of ready-to-wear and head of image. Working under Miuccia Prada, Vitale helped shape the phase that accompanied Miu Miu’s emergence as one of fashion’s most closely watched brands, propelling it into a period of exceptional growth. In 2024, Miu Miu sales rose 93%, becoming a significant upside for Prada Group.

That experience at Miu Miu appears to be a powerful calling card as Vitale joins Emporio Armani. Both brands occupy distinct positions within larger corporate ecosystems while speaking to younger customers through product and image. Before his time at Miu Miu, Vitale worked under Tomas Maier at Bottega Veneta, and Dean and Dan Caten at Dsquared2.

Vitale’s appointment also comes at a pivotal moment for Armani Group. Giorgio Armani’s will dictated that his heirs sell a 15% stake in the company within 18 months of his death, with a larger portion — between 30% and 54.9% — to be sold to the same buyer three to five years later. His will also specified three preferred buyers: L’Oréal, LVMH and EssilorLuxottica. The initial deadline falls in March 2027.

In 2025, Armani Group reported revenues of €2.2 billion, down 2.8% at constant exchange rates, while total turnover including direct licensee sales reached €4 billion. The group is led by CEO Giuseppe Marsocci, a 23-year veteran of the company who succeeded its founder in the CEO role in October that year. Today’s announcement demonstrates that Armani Group is not waiting on any new stakeholder to establish itself before sharpening its creative strategy in the wake of its founder’s death.

Marsocci said of today’s appointment: “The appointment of Dario Vitale marks an important milestone for the Armani Group: a decision that strengthens our creative organisation and confirms our commitment to looking ahead, consolidating the Group’s path of evolution while remaining faithful to Giorgio Armani’s values and vision. Emporio Armani is a brand of strategic relevance for us and our partners around the world. Giorgio Armani accessories represent a great opportunity. We look to this new phase with enormous confidence.”

Since that passing, the Giorgio Armani mainline has continued under Silvana Armani, leading womenswear, and Leo Dell’Orco, leading menswear. Both worked closely alongside Armani for many years on the collections he justly considered to be the quintessential expression of his decade-defining fashion sensibility. Now at Emporio, Vitale will be given a fresh chance — which this time extends beyond only one fashion collection — to reinvent and expand upon one of Italian fashion’s greatest legacies.

Princess Diana’s Iconic “Revenge Dress” Is Going Up For Auction

This December, Princess Diana’s so-called “Revenge Dress” will be offered up at auction for the first time in nearly three decades. The black silk Christina Stambolian design, worn by Diana to a Vanity Fairy party at London’s Serpentine Gallery in June 1994, will headline a standalone fashion evening auction at Sotheby’s in New York on 9 December. Its estimate sits between $150,000 (£110,666) and $300,000 (£221,333).

Few dresses have crossed the confines of fashion to become such a definitive pop culture moment as this LBD – or have their own Wikipedia page. The image of Princess Diana – shoulders bare in the low-cut and fitted black dress, a pearl choker at her neck, with scarlet nails and matching lipstick – became one of the most important photographs of her life. More than 30 years later, it remains a case study in the ability of clothes to communicate what their wearer would rather leave unsaid.

The context, of course, has become almost as famous as the dress itself. Earlier that day, a television interview with Diana’s estranged husband, then-Prince Charles, was due to air, in which he addressed his infidelity during their marriage. Diana had originally planned to wear something else to the Serpentine, but changed course at the last minute. She had owned Stambolian’s off-the-shoulder design for three years, having previously considered it “too daring” for a public appearance. Her former stylist Anna Harvey would later recall that Diana “wanted to look a million dollars.”

It was an extraordinary example of Diana’s increasingly assured understanding of the power of fashion. Rather than disappear from view on an evening when the world’s attention was trained on her private life, she offered up an entirely different, more confident image: one that would evolve into an assured, fashion-forward wardrobe in her last years. The dress subsequently became known as the “Revenge Dress”, giving a name to a style phenomenon that has been repeated by generations of celebrities navigating break-ups and scandal in public.

Diana never wore it publicly again. In June 1997, she included the Stambolian design among 79 dresses she personally put up for auction to benefit cancer and AIDS charities. It was acquired by its current owners and has remained in their possession ever since. This December’s sale will continue that charitable legacy, with part of the proceeds benefiting NHS Lothian Charity on behalf of the Royal Hospital of Edinburgh.

Diana’s style truly bloomed once she was freed from royal restrictions. After her separation from Prince Charles in 1992, she found herself with a wealth of new options and plenty of designers eager to dress her. The woman who dared to wear a Dior slip dress to the Met Gala in 1996 or body-con turquoise Versace at the Heart Foundation Ball that same year wasn’t the same Shy Di who hid behind baggy sweaters. Confident and entirely in control of her destiny, this era was her best – and it all started with this dress.

And, if anything, the mythology around the dress has only intensified during its decades away from the auction block. Christina Stambolian later created a replica of the original, made to the same measurements and using the same fabrics, which itself eventually came to auction. The Crown, too, recreated the look for Elizabeth Debicki’s portrayal of Diana; that version was among the costumes sold when hundreds of pieces from the Netflix series went under the hammer in 2024.

Earlier this year, even the green Jaguar XJ40 Sovereign from which Diana emerged at the Serpentine became a collector’s item, selling at auction for £66,250 in June. It is perhaps proof that almost every object caught in the orbit of those few minutes in Kensington Gardens has acquired a cultural charge of its own.

The original dress, however, remains the defining artefact. Before arriving in New York, it will tour London, Hong Kong and Geneva, before going on public view ahead of the 9 December sale. Nearly 32 years after Princess Diana first stepped onto the Serpentine lawn in it, the ultimate revenge dress is ready for another audience.

“I Could Never Be Kate”: Cara Delevingne Announces Her Debut Topshop Collection

A little over a week ago, as Cara Delevingne turned 34, the model, actor and musician gathered with her godchildren to watch the solar eclipse in Mallorca. It was fitting, really, that this particular birthday took place as the sky above was rearranging itself: Delevingne is also in the midst of change.

More than a decade after becoming the first model to front a Topshop campaign solo, back in 2014, Delevingne is returning to the beloved high-street label in a new guise: as the creative lead of her own collection. “I feel like we’ve been through a lot together,” she says, with a laugh. “But as you get older, and you take a step back, you have more of an appreciation for things. People will be quite surprised by this collection, it did feel quite out of my comfort zone. I want this to be for every man, woman, gender non-confirming person.”

True enough, of the 16 pieces – ranging from wide denim culottes to off-the-shoulder minidresses and cropped trench coats – perhaps only the white tank, pinstripe denim suiting and slim-cut jeans map immediately onto Delevingne’s signature raffish style. “When I designed stuff for brands in the past, I would make things only I would really wear,” she says. “This time, I wanted to think outside of that realm, to put a designer’s hat on and create something that felt cohesively for everyone. Like… am I really gonna do a long skirt?”

She did: a wraparound denim maxi that she describes as the sort of thing she might admire on “someone else”. And yet, since stepping back from clothes-horsing for other people full-time, the parameters of her own wardrobe have begun to broaden. “When I’m alone and in private, I’ll always dress like a 15-year-old boy, but when I’m more public-facing, I find it a lot more fun to play with fashion now that I don’t have to. I love trying on different clothes I wouldn’t have when I was younger because maybe I was stubborn, or trying to be rebellious, or trying to be, I don’t know, an individual. Now I’m like, yeah, maybe I will wear that skirt…”

It’s this outward-looking approach that distinguishes Delevingne’s collection from that of the other model whose name became synonymous with Topshop at the height of its powers. “In so many areas of my life, people have compared me to Kate, which I always find so sweet, but I just could never be her,” she says of Kate Moss, who Delevingne has previously mentioned stepped in to support her when the intensity of her early success began to take its toll. “She is her own incredible force to be reckoned with. I couldn’t have emulated that.”

While many of Moss’s 15 collections for the brand drew on pieces already hanging in her wardrobe, distilling her personal style into clothes for the masses, Delevingne has refused to make herself the blueprint. “I still have a Kate Moss for Topshop dress I could never wear because if I bend over, everyone will see the moon shining out, but also, you know, that was so of its time. It has its own look, its own smell almost.” What Delevingne learnt from watching Moss promote those collections as a 21-year-old was that “you’ve got to make it individual to you,” she says. For Delevingne, though, individuality doesn’t mean personal. “It would be hard to represent all elements of me in a 16-piece capsule.”

Which might also explain why Delevingne isn’t starring in the accompanying campaign. “I want it to represent the people!” she adds. What does unite the collection and its forebear, however, is a pronounced sense of London-ness – an identity that was also central to Topshop’s decision to appoint her. Managing director Michelle Wilson describes Delevingne as “a global style icon with deep London roots”.

“I don’t see the world through anything but a London lens,” Delevingne continues, pointing to asymmetrical cuts that “feel like the architecture of London”, as well as pieces designed to be swapped in and out of an existing wardrobe. That, to her, is what separates London from other fashion capitals: “mixing and matching time periods, vintage with new, and enjoying something forever.” Hence the collection’s emphasis on denim. “Denim gets better over time. We want these clothes to last for a really long time.”

And though Delevingne has spent much of the past few years in Los Angeles, her frame of reference remains stubbornly British. “You can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl,” she says. “I mean, if Topshop was in any other city, wouldn’t that be weird?”

Alexander McQueen Is Returning To London Fashion Week

Alexander McQueen will return to London Fashion Week for spring/summer 2027, the brand announced today, returning to its roots for the first time under creative director Seán McGirr, who was appointed in 2024.

“London has always been at the heart of McQueen; there’s a uniquely visceral energy to the city that runs throughout the house’s history and continues to inspire everything we do today,” McGirr says. “Returning to London Fashion Week allows us to deeply engage with that spirit and the creative community that defines both London and this house.”

McQueen hasn’t shown in London since Sarah Burton’s spring/summer 2023 Show, First Sight at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. The brand also showed in London the year prior, for spring/summer 2022, on an East London rooftop, inside a bubble dome.

Of course, the British fashion capital is central to the brand history. Launched by Lee Alexander McQueen in 1993, London played host to some of the designer’s most revered shows, including his early collections Highland Rape (autumn/winter 1995) The Birds (spring/summer 1995) and Golden Shower (spring/summer 1998). His Gatliff Road Warehouse era from 1998 to 2001 (No. 13, Eshu, Voss, What a Merry-Go-Round) is often considered McQueen’s most influential London period. McQueen then moved his shows to Paris in 2001, following investment from Gucci Group.

“Bringing McQueen back to London Fashion Week is a meaningful moment for the house. London is where our story began and remains central to our identity,” McQueen CEO Gianfranco D’Attis, who was appointed to the role on 3 June, said in a statement. “We are proud to reaffirm our commitment to the British Fashion Council and to the city’s extraordinary creative ecosystem, while continuing to build on McQueen’s heritage and shape its future.”

The brand’s return is a major coup for London Fashion Week, which has seen many of its most influential British houses decamp to Paris – including McQueen, Stella McCartney and Victoria Beckham – leaving a schedule anchored by Burberry, Erdem and Simone Rocha, alongside scores of smaller emerging brands.

“One of my earliest ambitions as CEO of the British Fashion Council has been to see Alexander McQueen return home to London Fashion Week,” says British Fashion Council CEO Laura Weir. “Few have shaped the global fashion landscape with the same force, imagination and cultural impact, and now is the time to welcome the brand back to its London roots. McQueen’s return is a statement of confidence in British creativity at its most fearless and distinctive. We are proud to welcome the house back to the official schedule and look forward to building an ambitious and meaningful partnership across the seasons ahead.”

The Kering-owned brand is undergoing a restructuring led by group CEO Luca de Meo, including job cuts and the appointment of D’Attis. The details of the upcoming show remain under wraps, but an impactful London show would be a key moment for McGirr to make a splash, outside of the saturated Paris schedule.

Kate Moss Just Set A Fashion-World Record Thanks To Madonna

Kate Moss was the only supermodel not asked to feature in the most supermodel-heavy music video of all time. Discovered by Sarah Doukas, founder of Storm Model Management, in a queue at JFK Airport just two years earlier, Moss was still on the cusp of global fame when, in 1990, a camera-weary George Michael decided that, rather than appear in the video for “Freedom! ’90” himself, he would hand the spotlight to Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford, inspired by Peter Lindbergh’s now-iconic portrait of the five women on the January 1990 cover of British Vogue. “I just missed it,” Moss told The Telegraph in 2011, when asked about her biggest regrets. “That would have been amazing.”

Oh well. In 2012, Michael finally turned to Moss – who had arguably eclipsed her peers in notoriety – to front the video for his comeback single “White Light”, in which she plays his mother. “Every boy who has lost his mum thinks his mum was the most beautiful woman in the world,” Michael told Magic FM at the time. “Why not ask the most beautiful woman in the world to be that figure?” By then, Moss had become as much a muse to music as she was to fashion, having bridged the two worlds through a series of indie boyfriends and a rock-and-roll reputation to rival theirs. (See: Moss, leaning backwards out of Pete Doherty’s window with a cigarette dangling from her mouth, or tramping through Worthy Farm in a metallic mini dress and mud-splattered Hunters at the 2005 edition of Glastonbury Festival.)

There she was as an exquisite corpse in Johnny Cash’s “Delia’s Gone”; a thuggish femme fatale in Primal Scream’s “Kowalski” in 1997; later singing backing vocals on the band’s cover of “Some Velvet Morning” in 2002, the same year she appeared as one of several Moss clones in Marianne Faithfull’s “Sex With Strangers”; and, most famously, in The White Stripes’ 2003 video for “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself”, pole-dancing for Sofia Coppola. Then along came appearances in Paul McCartney’s 2013 “Queenie Eye”, the posthumous video for Elvis Presley’s “The Wonder of You” and Massive Attack’s “Ritual Spirit”, both released in 2016. And so it should perhaps come as no surprise that, when Torso – the New York-based duo affiliated with pioneering fashion-cum-art collective DIS, and known for their work for likes of Mugler, Nike andl latterly, Charli xcx – was casting for Madonna’s just-released short film, which previews her forthcoming Confessions II album, Moss turned up once again.

During the “Danceteria” sequence – an ode to the New York club that shaped Madonna’s early career – she appears in the reflection of a bathroom mirror, flipping her hair in a biker jacket, while Benedict Cumberbatch, Odessa A’zion, Archie Madekwe, Gwendoline Christie, Arca, Shygirl, Richard E Grant, Honey Dijon, João Pedro and, bizzarely, Cole Palmer, writhe around the sinks, all of them clad in slinky, club-ready Dolce & Gabbana looks. That Sabrina Carpenter and Julia Garner also feature is a reminder of both the 67-year-old musician and the 52-year-old model’s influence.

It also places Moss at the centre of a peculiar piece of pop-cultural trivia. With this latest cameo, she is now tied with Cara Delevingne for the greatest number of music-video appearances by a model, at 14. Delevingne’s tally includes appearances in Taylor Swift’s 2015 “Bad Blood”, Elton John’s 2024 “Step Into Christmas” and – stretching the definition somewhat – the Gal Gadot-organised crime that was the celebrity singalong version of “Imagine” in 2020. The statistic calls to mind one of Moss’s most famous quotes, listed – perhaps apocryphally – on IMDb as: “I would have wanted to be a rock star, a lead singer, if I wasn’t a model. I’d go touring in a bus with my band. In my next life, that’s the plan.” As it turned out, Moss hardly needed to wait for a divine act of reincarnation in order to make any of that happen.

Every Industry Insider Is Checking Into The Louis Vuitton Hotel This Spring

When André Leon Talley (then a fledgling fashion editor) wrote off Anna Wintour’s car in the mid ’80s, he cared little about the state of his new boss’s wheels, or indeed his own extremities. “Is my luggage ok?” he wrote in his 2020 memoir The Chiffon Trenches. Talley’s much-loved Louis Vuitton luggage came courtesy of then-head of Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld, who bequeathed him an oversized, monogrammed trunk, after Talley endured the unbearable horror of travelling to Paris with “13 pieces of mismatched luggage”.

In the 130 years since Georges Vuitton dreamt up the Parisian house’s iconic monogram, every “L” and “V” that is tessellated across its bags – be it a personalised Neverfull or an embossed Alma – emulates a sense of luxurious escape. Just look to a 1966 paparazzi shot of Audrey Hepburn, holding a Louis Vuitton Speedy bag, jetting off to Switzerland from Heathrow airport. Or Bella Hadid snapped arriving in Milan in 2019, carrying a vintage cherry-print duffel bag from the Parisian house’s cult (and revived) collaboration with Takashi Murakami.

Now, the cultural legacy of five of Louis Vuitton’s most enduring bag designs – the Speedy, Keepall, Noé, Alma and Neverfull – is being celebrated in the heart of London’s Mayfair, with an immersive townhouse concept, titled the Louis Vuitton Hotel. Opening on 24 April for two months, the multi-level pop-up space in Berkeley Square (the only one that will exist in Europe), revels in the cultural narratives and savoir faire embedded within its luggage-making history.

Monogram monomaniacs will enter the space through the Keepall Lobby, a visual celebration of Talley’s travel favourite, which revolutionised the art of elegant travel with its notion of soft, foldable luggage in 1930. Once upstairs, guests can sip champagne and nibble on afternoon tea treats at Café Alma, a culinary celebration of the brand’s 1992-founded bag, named after Place de l’Alma in Paris. Also on the second floor: the Speedy Room homes in on the sleek and constantly evolving design of a bag beloved by not just Hepburn, but Rihanna, Snoop Dog and Sarah Jessica Parker. The accompanying gold-drenched Speedy P9 Safe Room celebrates Pharrell Williams’s ultra luxurious take on the silhouette, one assembled from 60 components using 240 precise steps. On the top floor? A tribute to surely the most ubiquitous accessory in Mayfair’s spas and workout spaces. The Neverfull gym playfully riffs on the notion that the beloved 2007-introduced tote bag weighs a lightweight 800g yet can carry up to an impressive 100kg.

But the most buzzing space is found on the lower ground floor at Bar Noé, a sleek champagne bar inspired by the history of the Noé bag, a drawstring silhouette favoured by Julianne Moore, Angelina Jolie and Dakota Johnson. The bag was first created in 1932 at the request of a champagne producer, who wanted to carry five bottles of bubbly over his shoulder. The bucket-shaped Noé can hold four bottles of champagne upright, and one inverted in its centre. Naturally, the bar named after it will serve only the finest fizz, against a musical backdrop curated by a roster of DJs.

After the injustice of Talley travelling with mismatched luggage to Paris, one of his most memorable airport visits came when he accompanied a team of models from Milan to the French capital, before Marc Jacobs’s debut collection for Louis Vuitton in March 1998. After a group including Naomi Campbell, Trish Goff and Kirsty Hume were delayed in Italy indefinitely, Jacobs sent a private jet stuffed with boxes of monogrammed bags to collect the girls. When they exited the plane on French soil, they were papped carrying fistfuls of Louis Vuitton luggage, with Campbell toting one of Jacob’s first Keepall designs in striking baby blue leather. Whether venturing to the Louis Vuitton Hotel via car, plane or simply the tube, the spirit of ultra-chic travel lives on in London this spring.

Meryl Streep Is Dressing Better Than Miranda Priestly

Time will tell whether Valentino’s Rockstud heels – which made a presumably paid-for appearance on the feet of Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada 2 – will catch on among today’s fashion editors, but one thing is certain: the most powerful woman working at the most powerful fashion magazine in the world would not be wearing so much baggy, greige tailoring. That moment passed long ago, having already trickled down through the collections of influencer brands like Maebe. What she would be wearing, though, is Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel, which this past season saw hundreds of editors queue in Paris for shoes in colours they did not even want. This is, mercifully, something Streep’s stylist seems to understand, dressing the actor in the brand for The Devil Wears Prada 2’s Tokyo premiere.

Granted, the film was made before Blazy showed his first collection, but Streep’s knitted Métiers d’Art skirt suit nonetheless feels right, because it is precisely the sort of thing the wicked witch of publishing conglomerate Elias-Clark might plausibly wear in 2026. Not, say, a dowdy pair of high-waisted trousers and a pleated blouse beneath a flimsy trench, with those overcompensating, “I’m a boss” rolled-up sleeves. I can’t help but imagine how that particular number will slip and puddle and curl off the edge of her assistant Simone Ashley’s desk – rather than thwack – as the Dennis Basso furs and Fendi coats once did when tossed at Andy Sachs. Even the leopard-print Givenchy by Sarah Burton she wore heading into The Late Show with Stephen Colbert this past week had more heft. Priestley always dressed with heft.

“It was like watching a documentary,” Anne Hathaway’s stylist Erin Walsh said of the original film’s wardrobe. “All of the assistants at the office were talking about it – and all of the bosses, too.” And yet, from what I have seen in the trailers, I can responsibly tell you that the sequel is not. There is no anthropology here, none of the grit that even today’s clackers look for in clothes, but rather a musical-comedy version (which already exists) of what power dressing looks like in fashion’s most cloistered corridors. Priestly, the impervious queen, no longer looks like the most powerful woman working at the most powerful fashion magazine, but the most powerful woman at a middling fashion PR agency. Costume designed by the same team behind And Just Like That…, it is perhaps no surprise that the drab, boardroom-bound Miranda Priestly now looks more like Miranda Hobbes.