Alessandro Michele takes the top spot at Valentino

Inhabitants of the fashion universe have been waiting with bated breath to see where former Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele would wind up next. This morning, the anticipation ended: Michele will join Valentino as creative director and show his first collection this September, for Spring 2025.

This will be the first time Michele has had the opportunity to design couture, and that prospect alone is reason for excitement. He is an enormously talented designer, one who gave Gucci a new direction centered around fantasy and poetry—but which also incorporated a very real attention to the zeitgeist and the magpie style of a new generation of fashion lovers.

It was Michele who first invented the notion of glammed-up “grandpa-core.” He transported us all through his theatrical runway shows, whether by way of a futuristic surgery room or with an entire cast of identical twins.

As he wrote in a statement on Instagram (translated from Italian): “I feel the immense joy and the huge responsibility to join a maison de couture that has the word beauty carved on a collective story made of distinctive elegance, refinement, and extreme grace. My first thought goes to this story: to the richness of its cultural and symbolic heritage, to the sense of wonder it constantly generates, to the very precious identity given with their wildest love by founding fathers Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti. These references always represented an essential source of inspiration for me, and I’m going to praise such influence through my own interpretation and creative vision.”

Given Michele’s profound love of craft and his penchant for embracing quirk, the possibilities for evolving Valentino’s extraordinary house codes are endless. He is certainly the right man for the job, and it will be a trip to see how far down the rabbit hole he goes when bringing his kaleidoscopic vernacular to Rome’s most storied fashion house.

Always a poet, Michele finished his statement: “May my bow, wide-open arms, speak for itself and salute in this early spring the regeneration of life and the promise of new blooming.”

This article first appeared in harpersbazaar.com on March 28, 2024. 

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