Lots of people who know Versace only for its pulse-racing eveningwear were left bemused when Julia Roberts arrived in Venice—where she is promoting Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt—wearing the first design to be revealed publicly under Dario Vitale’s creative directorship: a wool jacket, striped shirting, and straight-legged denim with pumps. The response from some online was “How is this Versace?”—a comment that proliferated further when Roberts later wore a crepe-de-chine gown on the red carpet, with few recognizing its harlequin motifs as a reference to Gianni Versace’s fall winter 1986 collection.

I’m inclined to side with Vitale’s equally vocal supporters: Roberts looked “fab, actually.” (Power, seduction and everything else Versace stands for can be communicated in other ways besides a safety-pin dress). Amanda Seyfried was also persuaded. She asked Elizabeth Stewart—the stylist both she and Roberts work with—in a comment on Instagram: “Please let me wear the same outfit.” And since we no longer live under the malign rule of Who Wore It Best columns, the actor duly borrowed the exact look for a photocall for The Testament of Ann Lee less than 48 hours later. More sustainable, surely, than getting Versace to, again, remake one of its more legibly on-brand looks from the ’90s and ’00s.

Photo: Getty Images

Photo: Getty Images

As for how clearly these Julia Roberts et Amanda Seyfried dual looks represent Vitale’s vision for Versace, that remains to be seen. What it does demonstrate, however, is the red carpet’s increasing function as a launchpad for newly appointed creative directors to tease at their direction. If the Cannes Film Festival offered a glimpse of Louise Trotter’s Bottega Veneta via Julianne Moore and Vicky Krieps, Venice has provided hints by way of Alba Rohrwacher in Jonathan Anderson’s Dior, Cate Blanchett in Glenn Martens’s Maison Margiela, and Jacob Elordi in Trotter’s Bottega. While this soft-launch approach makes sense in a year crowded with debuts, it serves more as a statement of a label’s new era under a new designer than a creative manifesto. The question, then, is not, “How is this Versace?” but rather, “Could this be Versace?”