In his shownotes for Fall/Winter 2025, Alessandro Michele speaks of the “unspeakable want to unify the irreducible kaleidoscope of our self” as an train in futility, exclaiming an ‘genuine self’, one untouched by the sticky fingers of societal affect, as a fable.
Blurring the strains between the non-public and the general public, a public toilet—in all its scientific, fluorescent-lit glory—grew to become the sudden runway for the designer’s second ready-to-wear collection for Valentino. And on this liminal house, the place identification—and its many parts—is each liberated and reconfigured, hidden and uncovered, Michele mediates on efficiency as pure intimacy and the basic query: Who’re we?
Very like the setting and Michele himself, the garments rejected simplicity. In exploring intimacy as a theatre of transformation, this season noticed an assemblage of eclectic pairings, with layers upon layers tactfully masking, revealing and styling that imparted a way of unplacability. Voluminous coats swallowed the physique complete, solely to be undone with a single motion, revealing delicate slip attire in liquid-like silk. Textures clashed like opposing identities: structured wool met sheer organza, sculpted leather-based dissolved into barely-there chiffon. Velvet opera gloves stretched previous the elbows, whereas oppulent elaborations grazed fluffy trims. A palette of inky blacks, dusty rose, deep plum, and ghostly whites was punctuated by flashes of Valentino purple—reinvigorated by its new chapter.
As fashions paused underneath the tough glow of loo mirrors, adjusting collars, tightening belts, tousling hair, the act of dressing mirrored a ritual of self-creation. Right here, in a fashion most Lynchian, identification isn’t fastened, solely pieced collectively by items of codified efficiency—layered and shifting like a story with no last act.
Whereas he doesn’t posit to know what all of it means, Michele invitations us all to embrace the theatre of existence and let go of fastened senses of self. As a designer recognized for his whimsical creativity and campy grandeur, he means that maybe it’s all simply costumes and masks and that there’s a magnificence within the freedom to be who we need to be each time we need to be it.
