Steven Meisel laid the old magazines flat on the table. Versace shot by Meisel in the nineties, stacked under Versace shot by Meisel now. The house spent its Fall campaign reading itself.
Versace released the campaign on 31 July. The title is Versace Obsessed, Chapter II. Meisel photographed it, Ferdinando Verderi set the direction, and Karl Templer styled the clothes. The images run as a series of cinematic vignettes rather than a single hero shot.
The set does most of the arguing. Mary Howard built flat-lay compositions out of the house archive and placed each model inside them. Copies of Vanitas, the publication tied to Gianni Versace’s early world, sit next to vintage Vogue editions, old campaign posters and books on Greek mythology and Italian history. Fashion magazines from the nineties and the two-thousands lie in the frame, several of them carrying Meisel’s earlier Versace pictures. The photographer is looking at his own work from thirty years ago.
The cast is young. Saar Mansvelt Beck, Alaina Rae, Elodie Guipaud, Bai Ruien and Wiley Rhoads carry the clothes. The point of the pairing is plain enough. New faces, old paper, one continuous set of codes running between them.
The codes
The motifs are the ones the house has always sold. The Medusa head. The Greca border. Leather against gold. Versace has rarely hidden what it is, and Chapter II leans into that reading instead of softening it. The clothes carry the signatures at full volume, framed by the printed history that made them legible in the first place.
This is the second part of a campaign idea Versace opened earlier in the year. The first chapter set out the obsession. The second one shows where the obsession comes from, laying the source material on the table and letting the archive speak for the brand while the design studio changes hands.
A house between designers has one safe place to stand. Its own past.
The Splendid EditBefore Mulier
The timing gives the campaign its weight. Versace now sits inside the Prada Group, and Pieter Mulier took the chief creative office on 1 July. His first collection is set for early 2027, not this September. The house chose to give him time in the archive before he shows anything of his own.
That decision leaves a gap in the calendar, and Chapter II fills it. There is no new silhouette to present, so Versace presents its memory instead. Meisel, who helped build the Versace image the first time, is the right person to hold the line until the next designer speaks.
Milan reads the campaign as a holding pattern with good manners. The house keeps its face in the room, refuses to rush its incoming designer, and trusts thirty years of pictures to carry the season. The archive answers for now. The clothes come later.
Milan holds the house while its next chapter is written. Courtesy of Fashion PR Firm
Chapter II is a bet on continuity. Hold the codes, keep the photographer, wait for the designer. For a house that has spent its whole life being obviously itself, a season spent inside the archive works as the argument. Hold the signatures long enough and they read as proof.