The party seems to be overon the set of the Valentino spring-summer 2025 fashion show. The seats, the floor lamps, the vases, all the furniture that makes up the decor of the fashion show lies under sheets. On the ground, the catwalk is a vast broken mirror, a metaphor for the fragility of existence, to which, according to Alessandro Michele, beauty is a remedy. A philosophical reflection that he shares in a press release, successively quoting Théophile Gautier, Montaigne or Heidegger. Either, the curtain seems to have fallen on the Pavilion of Folliesthe title of this oh-so-fantastic parade, which announced the theme of the day, without it being possible to anticipate such an atmosphere. These country residences, vacation spots where distinguished high society once indulged in pleasures, are both the theme and setting of Alessandro Michele’s first fashion show for Valentino. A gripping show, with a cinematic atmosphere, as the fashion public is fond of.
“It will be theatrical” warned the artistic director at the microphone of The BoF podcast, published on September 28. The promise was kept. Drawing on the legendary opulence of Valentino Garavani, particularly that of the 1970s and 1980s, the Italian designer has put together a show between grandeur and decadence. On the catwalk, a very personal rereading of the Valentino wardrobe comes to life, in the continuity of what made the new master of the place famous in the past, at Gucci.
Valentino spring-summer 2025 fashion show: Valentino is another
Revealed by surprise, its first collection, Resort 2025, laid the foundations for this new era. More specifically, she offered an answer to the question everyone was asking: will we discover, at Valentino, a new Michele? Unknown to the general public before his appointment at Gucci, the man had marked his time with bombastic, baroque, opulent fashion. A clear identity that there is no question of him denying. “I think a good designer must be himself” he slips into the same interview with BoF. In 1965, Garavani also said this: “When a designer has found his style, he must follow it and not try to change it.”
These are therefore the elements that make the new artistic director’s taste, the most excessiverich in know-how and eccentrics from the label’s archives, which were unearthed to enter the composition of the silhouettes for this spring-summer 2025. Surely it would have been easy to give Valentino red a predominant place, in line with the latest major marketing campaigns centered on a color, green Brat summer in Gucci Ancora red. Or to reproduce Valentino Garavani’s successes identically, to create obvious bridges. But what interests Michele is something else. The designer focuses on details to offer a contemporary version of what was the ideal jet-set wardrobe of the second half of the 20th century. An opulent, uninhibited wardrobe designed to shine, enriched with accessories, pearls, gloves, tights and other hats. Ornaments which constitute one of the pillars of its elegance, and which it also shares with the founder.
Orientalist details like fringes and buttons, silks with bohemian prints, long dresses with ruffles, jackets trimmed with fur, beaded embroidery… All these elements which have made up the language of Valentino chic are found mixed and digested, passed through the prism of Michele’s cabinet of curiosity aesthetic. A form of splendor that relies on know-how and a certain interpersonal skills. And which, failing to bring out a new Michele, brings back a facet of Valentino that has remained, like this “madness”, long dormant.
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