Nicole Kidman walked the Los Angeles premiere of Practical Magic 2 in black lace on the last night of August. The dress was Atelier Versace, cut by Pieter Mulier. It is the first thing he has let the public see since taking the house.
Mulier became chief creative officer of Versace on 1 July. Prada Group and Versace confirmed the appointment on 5 February, and he reports to Lorenzo Bertelli, the executive chairman. The Los Angeles gown is the first design of his tenure to reach a photograph.
It arrived without a runway. Milan's Spring/Summer 2027 shows run from 22 to 28 September, and Versace does not appear on the calendar the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana has published. The Kidman dress stands on its own, a single look rather than a season.
The gown
The lace was built by hand, an intarsia of pieces set into one another rather than a bonded run of yardage. The cut was close and asymmetric, the mood gothic to sit beside the film. Atelier Versace is the house's made-to-measure practice, and Mulier reached for its language to make the introduction.
One dress carries only so much. Black lace, a body-conscious line and a sensual finish already live inside Versace's vocabulary, and they live inside Mulier's, who spent years shaping cloth around the figure at Alaïa. What the gown withholds is colour, print, tailoring, bags, shoes and any sense of how he reads the archive. Those wait for a collection.
The calendar
Prada opens Milan this season. Versace does not turn up on the schedule, and the gap looks chosen more than accidental. A red-carpet look lets Mulier set a register without putting dozens of runway images up for a verdict in the same hour.
Vogue reports his runway debut for 2027, with Atelier Versace returning to Paris haute couture around the same moment. Versace has not fixed a date or a format in its own words. Until it does, that timeline belongs to reporting rather than to the house.
One dress sets the register. The collection will have to answer for everything the dress leaves out.
The Splendid EditThe house
Mulier is Belgian. He led Alaïa, and before that held senior roles at Jil Sander, Dior and Calvin Klein, much of it beside Raf Simons. That record rests on cut and proportion more than spectacle, which is a specific thing to bring to a house long known for volume and heat.
The plan reads as patience. A name attaches to Versace through a single photograph, the ateliers keep working, and the first full statement holds until the teams decide it is ready. Kidman wore the opening line on 31 August. The rest is still on the table, half-cut.
A black-lace eveningwear study, in the register of Atelier Versace. Courtesy of Fashion PR Firm