While the curtain went up in the pitch-black theater, glowing red words ran like an English enlightened ticker tape over a black digital screen-“eccentricity, gothic, occultism, madame butterfly, existentialism”-in a continuous, random and unclear current. Then a woman seemed like a Harlequin beam, with a skirt so large that the lake on a tent with a torso on top became from the dark from the dark. She went to the left of the stage and slowly walked to the center where she turned around to face the audience and then left the stage on the right. This exact choreography would repeat itself 48 times during the show if an opera voice sang a sad cathedral song.
So ‘Vertigineux’ or ‘Dizzy’, the first couture show of Alessandro Michele for Valentino, went to the brand he joined last year after the farewell of Gucci. And it was not only his Valentino Couture debut, it was his first couture, period.
There was excitement in the air. Despite the current seismic shifts in fashion, it is not often that the couture, the most elite and expensive sector, get a shot of new blood. Especially from a designer who has a history of changing the way people dress.
Giorgio Armani had celebrated the 20th anniversary of his Armani-Privè the day before the Valentino show, and viewing the characteristic parade of 93 star-controlled suits and Slinky, on Chinoiserie-inspired dresses, was a memory that, back in 2005 when he was in 2005 Dare to break the barriers of the couture, he was seen as a arrivist (now he is the establishment, with his own Hôtel part to show it). The new designer of Chanel, Matthieu Blazy, starts later this year; For now, the studio team offered a smart light version of the classics: Mini Bouclé suits and Swishy tea dresses from the 1920s in Jordan Amandel Shades.
That left room for some new ideas. Maybe Mr. Michele they have. Perhaps at least he would go beyond the corset, which has become the most omnipresent item of the season on almost every runway (after all, it is the fashion version of Ozempic). Ludovic de Saint Sernin even based his whole guest designer tint at Jean Paul Gaultier on underwear: corsets in leather, lace or brokaat; Corsets romantic, provocative and cool. Even corsets for men.
Although the most interesting version of Gaurav was Gupta, who added his immediately recognizable mythological swirls to a bustier with extra large pants, such as a nymph on Greenpoint. The designer becomes known for his explanation with making red carpet dresses (Megan Tea Stallion was in his first row; Usha Vance wore one of his appearance during the recent US presidential inauguration), but the restraint required by Daywear gave him a Dose of unexpected cool.
Yet it was not as unexpected as the fact that guests in entering the Valentino show found a ‘script’ of 200 pages on their seats that a meditation contained about ‘The Poetics of the List’. One that also contained a quote from the Italian philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco and then on the list of even more words for each outfit is mentioned, more than 50 for the first look alone. It was clear that there was something else in store.
That is a way to say it.
What happened was in fact an exercise in designer complacency and a chic clothing party of Shakespearean costume drama decorated in the splendor of intellectual. For all the incredible work and thousands of seamstress and fantastic materials that have entered each piece (in the first look alone, according to the show notes), if the emperor has some new clothes for a Royal Cosplay Convention, they can actually actually Looks like this.
Such as Marie Antoinette who plays an English governor who runs through the fields of Le Petit Trianon in a floral silk Chiffon shirtdress with a gigantic skirt. Or the queen of the prairie in a patchwork ball dress complete with Elizabethan toedles at the neck and wrists. Or a Hussar in Metallic Jacquard Pantaloons and matching feathers.
Even the occasional daily look, and there were a few, seemed to have been excavated from the film sets from the 60s in Cinecittà Studios in Rome (or the Valentino archives, as in the case of a narrow black dress with a cyclist Turquoise, inspired, inspired By a look from 1985).
Then Mr. Michele his large, more-is-more, vintage bricolage brought to Gucci, it seemed like a relief after the nouveau rijks of the earlier incarnation of that brand. In the context of Valentino Couture, the balance was thrown away for everyone (although the use of Mr. Michele who was spanded the decades of the decades) and to old -fashioned surplus. At the end of the show, the digital screen started to glitter dramatically when strobe lights arrived and all models ran in a wind storm.
During a press conference later, Mr. Michele, her in two Heidi flashes, settled on a thronelike with carpet-covered plated chair and explained his affinity for lists, of which he said disorder. “Fair enough, but where was the customer in it? Maybe struggling to get her dress through the door.
It is not that couture must be practical or even realistic. But it must show some sensitivity to the modern state. Otherwise it’s just a museum piece.
