Alessandro Michele Is Back! And He’s Not Afraid to Say It

A mere months ago, just days after Pierpaolo Piccioli announced his departure from Valentino, the brand revealed that Alessandro Michele would fill the role of creative director. Today, Michele dropped a surprise Resort 2025 collection titled “Avants les debuts,” or “before the debuts”–a nod to the idea that this is still a percurser to his first big seasonal collection which will hit the runway in September [fact check?]. In the images, there are 171 men’s and women’s ready-to-wear looks plus 93 accessories, a massive output for any seasonal fashion collection, let alone one that was, at least as far as we know, executed on a 60-day timeline. Though it’s not the first time Michele, who has long been hailed as a disruptor in the fashion space, has created a collection on a tight timeline. The first collection he designed at the helm of Gucci in 2015 was turned around in weeks.

The new Valentino is extremely Micheleian: retro prints, mashed-up textures, extreme layering, and ruffled youthful whimsy tied up in a big ole pussy bow. There’s also a lot of the house’s founder, Valentino Garavani in there too, felt through the thoughtful nods to archival silhouettes from the 1960s and 1970s, like the prim, retro Jackie Kennedy-style suiting and lace-trimmed sheer blouses. Lady clothes are resplendent here, especially the ivory coat with gold “V” hardwareand the jackets over pants which all nod to Garavani’s famous White Collection in 1968. Michele told Business of Fashion that during the design process “something magical happened, a chemical reaction, and we started to work as if in an orchestra–with love, and without looking at time.” He added, “We lost ourselves in Valentino’s archive.

Michele is a brilliant designer and also a master marketer. Even with 171 looks, his vision is clear and distilled, and he knows how to push it out to the customers in a way that feels electrified by newness, even if we’ve seen versions of it before. Michele was responsible for much of the nostalgia boom of the mid-to-late 2010s. What’s interesting about Michele joining Valentino is that both he and Mr. Garavani share a love of opulence and a penchant for using the word “beauty” with great abandon and reverence. Like Michele’s Gucci, this is a vision for a maximalist and someone who is attached to eccentricities but also one that touches on a brand built by Garavani around the ideals of elegant dressing.

What seems to be missing from the Garavani-originated equation thus faris the embrace of sensuality. Garavani very much believed, as Piccioli did, that clothing had the power to make its wearer feel strong and in control of their own sexual energy. He’s designed more “death of sex” dresses (as a former colleague of mine once called the covered up, grannycore look) than he has not. That being said, he did successfuly shift Gucci away from the hyper-horny perspective of his predecessors there, Tom Ford and Frida Giannini. And to be fair, this is just a first outing for Valentino, and it will be fascinating to see how he builds on the house codes over time–and it does take time! Even for someone as seasoned as Michele. Sex may be on the brain, too. He told Business of Fashion that he was thrilled at the prospect of working with a house steeped in heritage craft, saying that “For someone like me, it’s a continuous orgasm. It’s a climax.”

Valentino Resort 2025

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Brooke Bobb is the fashion news director at Harper’s Bazaar, working across print and digital platforms. Previously, she was a senior content editor at Amazon Fashion, and worked at Vogue Runway as senior fashion news writer.