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Dario Vitale has been named creative director of Emporio Armani and Giorgio Armani Accessories, the Armani Group confirmed on Wednesday, effective immediately.
Armani described the move as the start of “a new chapter” for the brand, and it marks the first time an outsider has been given control of one of the house’s core creative pillars.
Silvana Armani, head of womenswear design at the Armani Group, and Leo Dell’Orco, who leads menswear, said in a joint statement that Emporio Armani has been close to them personally, describing it as a place built on “freedom, experimentation, and energy.” They added that they see Vitale as a talent already established internationally, one they trust to carry that spirit forward respectfully and authentically.
The Italian designer, born in 1983, takes on a dual mandate, overseeing both the youth-skewing Emporio line and the group’s accessories business. Neither touches the mainline Giorgio Armani collections, which remain under the stewardship of Silvana Armani and Leo Dell’Orco, the two executives who have kept the founder’s design language alive since his passing last year.
Vitale spent close to fifteen years building his reputation at Miu Miu, where he joined in 2010 and climbed from designer to design director of ready-to-wear and eventually head of image. Miu Miu’s revenue grew 97.3 per cent in 2024, growth widely tied to his design leadership.
Before Miu Miu, he worked at Dsquared2 and then at Bottega Veneta under Tomas Maier, after graduating from Istituto Marangoni. He left Miu Miu in January 2025. Later Versace pulled him in as chief creative officer, succeeding Donatella Versace after her March departure and installing him as the first person outside the family to lead the house.
His debut collection, staged at Milan’s Pinacoteca Ambrosiana that September, went hard into the overtly sexualised silhouettes of Versace’s eighties and nineties heyday.
Two days after Prada Group closed its $1.375 billion acquisition of Versace in December, the company announced Vitale’s exit, leaving CEO Emmanuel Gintzburger to steer the creative team in the interim. He had lasted a single season.
Giorgio Armani’s death in September 2025, at 91, left a business with an unusually concentrated ownership structure and a will that spelt out exactly how it should evolve. He instructed his heirs to sell an initial 15 per cent stake in the company within eighteen months, naming LVMH, L’Oreal and EssilorLuxottica as preferred buyers should a deal materialise. Control of the empire, which spans Emporio Armani, Armani Casa and Armani Hotels alongside the mainline, was split among his closest circle: forty percent to Dell’Orco, fifteen percent each to Silvana Armani and nephew Andrea Camerana, with the remaining thirty percent held by the Armani Foundation he set up in 2016.
Giuseppe Marsocci filled the chief executive role in October. He is a 23-year veteran of the group who had spent recent years working alongside Armani directly as deputy managing director and global chief commercial officer; it followed earlier stints at Turin’s GFT Group, licensee to Valentino and Dior, and at Fila Sport, and more than a decade at the New York office, first as president of the Trimil US joint venture before becoming CEO of the Americas between 2014 and 2019. Dell’Orco chairs the board. Silvana Armani sits as vice chairman.
Emporio Armani launched in 1981 as the looser, more experimental counterpart to the mainline, aimed at a customer the founder saw as younger and less formal. Plenty of industry observers had started describing Emporio as a diluted echo of the flagship line, even as it grew alongside ventures like Armani Privé and EA7.
Accessories sit inside his remit too, a category that has typically driven a larger share of revenue for luxury groups than ready-to-wear. Handbags, footwear and small leather goods carry shorter production lead times than full collections.
Emporio Armani’s first runway outing after the founder’s passing came in September 2025, when the label’s SS26 show, titled “Returns,” staged in Milan, closed without a designer’s bow.
They skipped a full show during Milan Men’s Fashion Week in January 2026, marking the moment instead with an event at its Via Manzoni store tied to EA7’s role as Team Italy’s outfitter for the Milano Cortina Olympics, alongside a smaller EA7 showcase of the Olympic kit.
The house’s most recent collection followed in February 2026, when Dell’Orco and Silvana Armani presented a 108-look co-ed collection titled “Maestro” built on a beige, grey, and black palette, presented at Armani/Teatro in Milan Fashion Week. For the first time, Emporio Armani folded its menswear into the women’s season.
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