A floor made of broken mirrors, soft lights and the last seconds of a seemingly endless wait: Alessandro Michele’s debut at Valentino is a reality and “we must rejoice” (the soundtrack of the fashion show says so). The show of the Spring-Summer 2025 collection, called Pavillon des Folies and which took place on the Paris Fashion Week calendar, definitively announces the new direction of the maison under the reins of the new creative director, whose appointment was made official last March. Michele’s name is obviously anything but unknown to the luxury industry: he was the creative director of Gucci from 2015 to 2022.
The inspiration
A taste of what would happen today in Paris with Pavillon des Folies we received it when Alessandro Michele made a surprise reveal Avant les Débuts, the Spring 2025 pre-collection. That first stylistic exercise had allowed him not only to begin exploring the archives of the maison founded by Valentino Garavani in 1959, but also to state with certainty – in an interview with Business of Fashion – that now he could ask for the “impossible”.
Get out of the comfort areas on the other hand, it is something that Michele often suggested during his creative direction of Gucci, connecting worlds – or rather, universes – that are completely opposite, always with sensitivity and great mastery. Today, to leave the comfort areas it could have been the very aesthetic of the Valentino house: after the era of the previous creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, the DNA of the fashion house goes back to its origins. That is, to the Seventies of Maestro Garavani, to the elegance of the bourgeois class of that time, reinterpreted through the eclectic and kitsch-chic by Alessandro Michele.
The style
The surprise launch of Avant les Débuts had split public opinion in two. Why Alessandro Michele’s style is Alessandro Michele’s styleand it doesn’t exist imprinting clearer and more tangible than that produced by his creative flair. Someone, rightly, wondered if Valentino’s new course would be like his chapter at Gucci. The answer, however paradoxical, is that the style that emerges from the Spring-Summer 2025 collection is indeed that of Alessandro Michele, but still faithful – although filtered through his lens – to the DNA of the fashion house.
Short and long dresses, with flounces or pleats, predominate in the collection. Present almost everywhere are bows, along with fur stoles, lace tights, pearl necklaces and wide-brimmed hats bearing the mantra more is more at the height of maximalism. How to declare the definitive end of the short but intense era of quite luxury. It’s not missing the homage to the famous Valentino red, the emblematic color of the brand. Denim appears among the wardrobe proposals daily masculine, long dresses embellished with sequins and luminous crystals instead trace the identikit of feminine glamour.
Curiosity
For his greeting to the public (in whose front row there were many of the designer’s affectionate star friends, including Harry Styles, Jared Leto, Alessandro Borghi and Paolo Sorrentino), Alessandro Michele showed off a look that we had actually already seen. He is the protagonist of a photo he published on Instagram on March 28 this year, when on social media he expressed all his immense joy and gratitude for the new role.
«It is a great honor for me to be welcomed into the Maison Valentino – he said. – I feel the immense joy and enormous responsibility in entering a Maison de Couture that has engraved the word “beauty” in a collective history made of refinement and extreme grace”. A look that the creative director could have chosen with full knowledge of the factscreating a common thread with that day when everything changed again. And then “we must rejoice”.
Instagram content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Source: Vanity Fair
I’m Susan Karen, a professional writer and editor at World Stock Market. I specialize in Entertainment news, writing stories that keep readers informed on all the latest developments in the industry. With over five years of experience in creating engaging content and copywriting for various media outlets, I have grown to become an invaluable asset to any team.
%20Luca%20Delpia%20-%20Archivio%20della%20Fondazione%20I%20Teatri%20Reggio%20Emilia%201071%20b%20(002).jpg "The CCCP on stage in Legnano for the last call: “If you weren’t there, we would not be here”")
