Ousted at Versace, Dario Vitale Lands at Emporio Armani

Dario Vitale, the designer ousted from Versace after a single collection, has landed at Emporio Armani, according to a New York Times report published on Wednesday. The newspaper described Vitale's lone Versace outing as having become 'almost mythic for fashion insiders' — a rare verdict for a designer who barely had time to be judged by the market. He is now taking on a corner of the Armani empire.

The move matters in Milan because the Armani group is the city's largest independent fashion house and its most closely watched succession question. Giorgio Armani, who founded the company in 1975, has died, and the group he left behind must decide how its labels are run and by whom. Emporio Armani sits below the main Giorgio Armani line: a younger, more commercial label, and a testing ground for designers the house wants to promote.

Vitale's appointment, as the Times frames it, is a second chance inside the same industrial system that dismissed him. Milan's fashion week calendar runs on a small circuit of houses and a smaller circuit of designers, so a designer ejected from one label rarely leaves the city's orbit. The Times does not report the terms of the appointment, the scope of Vitale's remit at Emporio Armani, or whether his first collection will show in the coming season.