Baroque layering, theatricality and artisanal virtuosity define the new narrative of the Maison. Between poetry and obsession in the wake of its founder.
At the end of the high fashion week, the Valentino fashion show signed by Alessandro Michele, leaves the pleasure of wonder in the eyes. Not a classic catwalk but a private and at the same time collective vision conceived as an old KaiserPanorama, the historic carousels with the first moving images. The Roman designer is always generous and surprising in his narratives and the staging of the collection is a continuum with the collections themselves: content and container rise to the same importance and speculative incisiveness. The authorial imprint is very strong: Michele brings his recognizable universe to the catwalk, made up of baroque stratifications, cultured and obsessive references, a theatricality that borders on costume and a visual narrative that always seems on the verge of exploding under the weight of the quotes. Cultured, often very cultured, unlike his other colleagues. But the risk remains that of building an overly rich stage, where each dress is a fascinating but hyperbolic story. The artisanal virtuosity is indisputable, but it is almost swallowed up by an aesthetic that knows no subtraction. Many looks strike for their imaginative power, while others surprise only for an excess of decoration, the most interesting remain those where the artisanal virtuosity of the maison emerges in all its poetry. Declaredly anti-minimalist, Michele dialogues in his own way with the legacy of the recently deceased designer Valentino Garavani, rewriting an aesthetic that fascinates more as a conceptual exercise than as a vision of timeless beauty.
