Have you ever seen a stitch sampler? In the 17th century, these intricate swatches of embroidery served as both a training ground and a showcase, a tangible résumé of a young woman's mastery of stitches, motifs, letters, and symbols. In a nutshell, they were both a reference and a declaration of skill, each thread woven with purpose.
For Alessandro Michele, stepping into Valentino after Gucci was like threading an entirely new needle to embroider into the language of Haute Couture. He had to attune himself to the legacy of a house split between Rome and Paris, a house that for decades dressed stars, socialites, and the world's elite in its sumptuous designs.
Like a novice embroiderer, he had to learn every step and learn how to direct an atelier steeped in a different rhythm of craftsmanship. The experience was dizzying, an overwhelming plunge into the vertiginous depths of couture. That very sensation inspired the title of his debut collection for Valentino: "Vertigineux".
The presentation itself mirrored this heady disorientation, with stadium-style bleachers looming in the dimly lit venue, heightening the sense of imbalance. And dizzy it was.
Like eager amateur stitchers filling every inch of space with a motif, Michele tried to cram all sorts of references, obsessions, fixations and materials not just in all the collection but in each and every gown donned by models, spanning generations and including women in their 50s and 60s as well. Aside from that, he also interwove philosophical musings throughout, layering meaning atop fabric.
Hence, while the opening look conjured up in the mind of Italians the anticipation of Carnival (arriving later this year, in early March), the colossal crinolined skirt covered in tufted Harlequin motifs (with a finely pleated bodice that called to mind Madame Grès' designs), pointed at tropes from the commedia dell'arte.
Perhaps in evoking it, Michele was doing more than mining its aesthetics, perhaps, like Elsa Schiaparelli in 1938, he was turning to its theatrics in the face of crisis. After all, when the world darkens, fashion designers often turn to the commedia dell'arte, a theater of exaggeration that offers both escape and satire.
The collection then oscillated between grand, operatic gowns and more tempered - though still theatrical - looks.
A frothy tulle confection, seemingly conjured from the memory of Piero Tosi's legendary ball gown for Claudia Cardinale in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, stood in stark contrast to armor-like silhouettes encrusted with a constellation of sequins and crystals, modern-day battle attire, perhaps, for contemporary Joans of Arc.
Michele's maximalist instinct was omnipresent, saturating the runway in an opulent deluge of embellishment and excess. It poured itself into the sweeping ballgowns, among them, a Valentino-red evening gown, a tribute to the house's founder, and in tiered ivory lace and chiffon column dresses.
A robe manteau from Valentino's archives was reborn as a vivid grass-green coat dress, now ballooned by a hidden pannier, a nod to the decadent silhouette of Versailles.
Panniers reappeared, cinching a sculptural black evening gown that otherwise evoked an uncanny resemblance to Anita Ekberg's iconic La dolce vita look, while ecclesiastical reds and stark black-and-white ballgowns pointed at cardinals, nuns and priests (and Michele already reinvented ecclesiastical robes in a Gucci collection) the surreal clerical fashion show in Fellini's Roma (while at times the hats seemed borrowed from Fellini's The Clowns).
Cinematic references were also a personal homage as his mother was a costume designer in Rome (one look was indeed entitled "My Mother" - fourteen picture in this post, look on the right).
Masked figures and historical flourishes recalled Fellini's Casanova, but they were also a nod to Venice and to Michele's long-standing fascination with disguise and masks, a motif that frequently appeared in his collections for Gucci. There were also references to Adrian’s costumes and early couture gowns by Charles Frederick Worth.
The ghosts of the Ballets Russes and of La Casati shimmered in rich brocades and Oriental moods, while hints of Caramba's costumes for Turandot and Umberto Brunelleschi's rich illustrations, lingered in some of the extravagant designs matched with grand headdresses.
Overload? Absolutely. But couture has always been a space for spectacle, and Michele delivered it with ferocity through sequins upon embellishments, couture techniques upon historical echoes delivered through pannier skirts, ruff collars, towering sleeves, and floral tapestries, a rhapsody of excess, that proved that in Michele’s world, too much is never enough.
Fast fashion has dulled our appreciation for clothing, reducing garments to mere commodities rather than the deeply personal vessels of memory they truly are. Yet, clothes hold our histories. Even people suffering from Alzheimer's tend to remember certain garments and to recall through them significant events.
With this collection, Michele sought to imbue his designs with a sense of remembrance, intertwining Valentino's rich history with echoes of his own tenure at Gucci. It was an act of sartorial archaeology, more than designing, that consisted in excavating visual and technical memories from the past and threading them into the present.
Michele included all these memories, references, and inspirations into a weighty document left on each guest's chair. It was no philosophical treatise, but rather a collection of lists, of words, drawn from the lexicon of fashion, art, cinema, and philosophy, that served as anchors, mapping the conceptual framework behind each look.
This was an attempt to impose structure on the dizzying avalanche of ideas he got while visiting the house's archive. These same words, glowing in digital red type, pulsed across the back of the set, reinforcing the dense narrative embedded in every design.
The result? A heady, opulent spectacle, overcharged, maximalist, and layered. It was a collection best appreciated by those well-versed in art, cinema, and fashion history, where even a silhouette, a fabric choice, or a precise shade of red could spark recognition.
Not everyone will embrace this overcharged vision of couture. After all, Michele is not a couturier in the traditional sense, he is part of the generation of designers who can be defined "remixers" and he excels at this skill. There is indeed a world of difference between inventing an entirely new construction, pattern, or silhouette, as Cristóbal Balenciaga, Charles James, or Worth once did, and weaving together disparate details from different eras into a single garment. But at this moment, this debate is beside the point.
What truly lingers is something else: the profound sense of vertigo Michele experienced upon stepping into Valentino's couture atelier, where artisans, many of whom have dedicated decades to the house, bring garments to life with skill and devotion. Though Michele has spent years in the industry and helmed a powerhouse like Gucci, he openly admitted he had never witnessed the inner workings of a couture atelier before. What he saw left him awestruck, as if experiencing a kind of creative epiphany.
After all, a monumental, hand-stitched gown cannot be treated like a ready-to-wear skirt, it demands reverence, time, and a deep understanding of craftsmanship. And this raises an even bigger question: how many young designers, caught in the relentless cycle of fashion's ever-accelerating seasons, would pause, perhaps even reconsider their path if they, too, were given the chance to step inside such an atelier, if they were confronted with history, heritage, and the magic of the human hand? Who knows. For the time being we just know that a maximalist has found in a couture atelier an inspiring place to dream, unravel the past and stitch it into the present, weaving endless fashion remixes.
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