The Medusa at Via Gesù does not blink. She has witnessed decades of bodies in motion—unapologetic, unafraid, unbound. Under Dario Vitale, her gaze now opens onto VERSACE EMBODIED: a new vision of the House, rooted in heritage yet restless for reinvention.

This project gathers a constellation of artists across disciplines—Collier Schorr, Camille Vivier, archival Steven Meisel, Eileen Myles, Andrea Modica, Pony Boy, Stef Mitchell—each interpreting Versace as condition rather than image. Strength and sexuality, rigor and abandon, memory and invention collide, unearthing the House’s essence in both past and future tense.

Chapter One begins with Vivier’s dreamlike photographs of the original bronze Medusa at Via Gesù, a myth made material in the very door of the atelier. Modica turns to Southern Italy, capturing youth against Mediterranean light—bodies carrying the House’s heritage in sun and shadow. From the archive, Meisel’s Istante catalogue resurfaces, recalling Versace’s enduring dialogue with culture’s provocateurs.

The tension of intimacy sharpens in Schorr’s illustrations and Myles’ instinctive poem Put It Back, while Pony Boy’s shared space for dance translates the House into movement—forthright, liberating, communal. Stef Mitchell’s portrait of Binx Walton on a bike distills independence into a single, kinetic image: irreverent, uncontainable, unmistakably Versace.

VERSACE EMBODIED moves through mediums like pulse through vein. Its archive is not static but alive, its vision carried by those willing to confront desire, vulnerability, and strength in equal measure. Vitale’s vision insists that Versace is not only worn but lived. It is desire pressed against discipline, vulnerability in dialogue with strength, contradiction rendered beautiful. It is not confined to the runway or the archive, but spills into movement, voice, skin, memory.

The Medusa remains: eternal witness to this return, and to all that dares to come after.

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