Alessandro Michele’s return to fashion with Valentino restores our desires for the excess, and his SS25 collection restarts our notion of what it means to create fashion in an age of simplicity.
When Alessandro Michele left Gucci, it felt like the fashion world had stopped functioning properly. It may sound preposterous, but his departure saw whatever was left of epic, eccentric fashion leaving with him, with that lust for life — so evidently present in each of his creations — seemingly gone forever.
It was so major that the price we had to pay during his absence was hefty. It plunged the industry into utter boringness, allowing for micro-trends such as “Quiet Luxury” and the “Clean Girl Aesthetic” to thrive amongst his disappearance. It allowed brands such as The Row and Polène to gnaw at our taste buds and wiped clean any arousal for excitement at multi-label boutiques with the overtaking of minimal, sterile products. For a moment it was as though we were forced to move on from the highs of an illustrious and controversial era, one that Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, and Jean Paul Gaultier had too procured in their time, to a forthcoming, clearly uninspiring future.
But Michele’s debut showing for Valentino, arguably the most anticipated collection this season, assured us that not all of that maximalism is lost. In fact, we already knew that when he caught us off guard with the release of the house’s Pre-Spring 2025 collection — a behemoth lookbook comprising 171 looks (like the days of his blockbuster collections on Hollywood) and a return of the immaterial worlds comprised of every era seemingly appearing all at once. Likewise, Spring Summer 2025 sees the same continuum as Michele’s lore on fashion.
It has its fair share of 1970s inspiration, with silhouettes and just the right amount of product variety to satisfy anyone — judging from the lengthy amount of looks. Who could forget the fair amounts of superstitions in Michele’s work, like the cracked mirrors on the floors that sprawled across the runway — a case of getting at the back luck first before it gets you at your debut show? Even the casting, with models brooding a droning face, follows the same attitude.
To be fair, if one were to present this without name-dropping Valentino, no points would be deducted if one mistakes them for old archival images of Michele’s time at Gucci. And there is nothing wrong with that. Clearly confident in his own language, a house like Valentino seems more fitting for a designer whose habits are inclined to skew the archives of several decades, rip them up into smaller pieces and assemble them again into a new look. With a history entwined with old-world celebrities of young Hollywood and Italian Cinema, it’s the perfect place for Michele. It is also what Gen-Zs are actively looking out for. This means, it would not take that long for this new refreshed vision of Valentino to soak into our minds and inevitably, drag fashion out of the sluggishness it is at today.
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