To decipher one of Alessandro Michele’s press releases can be a degree-level task: the thick tome left on each seat at the Italian designer’s first haute couture collection for Valentino, held in Paris earlier today, was as thick as a script for a feature-length film. In it, he referenced everyone from Umberto Eco to Homer, James Joyce to Italo Calvino, couched in the language of philosophy and semiotics.

Its essence, though, spoke of an altogether more simple task: that of making a list. Titled ‘Vertigineux: A Poetics of the List’, he spoke of Eco’s assertion that the list is a way to ‘confine the infinite extension of the existing within a meaningful framework… to bring some order to the chaos of the universe’. To create a couture collection is a daunting task: it represents the pinnacle of dressmaking, and the designer who takes on one of the handful of haute couture houses must work in harmony with the petite mains of the atelier (they are responsible for the hand-construction and embellishment of each of the collection’s looks).

Alessandro Michele’s debut couture collection for Valentino

So in the book’s pages were Michele’s own lists, an attempt to distil the infinity of options that haute couture affords into a framework for a gown: 48 in total, each corresponding with a single look, a ‘feverish’ assemblage of words and phrases from the simple ‘shirt’, ‘ruche’, ‘satin’ and ‘dress’ to ‘dramaturgy’, ‘austerity’ and ‘my mother’. In the show, which took place at Palais Brongniart in central Paris, guests look downwards onto a long black stage, behind which the various words flickered along the backdrop (at the show’s end they jolted and distorted, before reading simply ‘etcetera’ over and over, as if malfunctioning).

It was an apt glimpse into Michele’s approach to the medium, which, like both his debut ready-to-wear collection for the house and his star-making collections at Gucci, was freewheeling and eclectic. An impossibly flared gown, which opened the show, fell away into colourful harlequin diamonds constructed from gathered tulle; others were adorned with enormous peacock feathers, rich layers of sequin embellishment, frothy waterfalls of tulle, plissé capes and tassels, while panniers, Tudor ruffs and plays on Victoriana were a soaring spin through fashion history. To attempt to describe each look – and its multitude of elements – would require a pages-long list of its own. It was best to simply let yourself be entertained.

Michele described this approach (in typically esoteric style) as ‘a constellation of visions… a plurality of interconnected worlds’. ‘Each dress is not just an object,’ he continued. ‘It’s rather the knot of a net of significance, [recalling] eras, cultures and echoes of past stories.’ In its expression of sartorial freedom – always at the heart of Michele’s approach – this was a showstopping opening act.

Follow our coverage of Haute Couture Week S/S 2025.

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It was always going to be a moment. Nearly two years to the day, Alessandro Michele showed his final collection for Gucci in Milan, exiting the Italian house two months later. This afternoon in Paris, the Rome-born designer made his hotly awaited return to the runway with his debut collection for Valentino, a so-called ‘Pavillon des Folies’ which mused on the idea of contemporary beauty. ‘When I say beauty, I am clearly not referring to its universalistic, dogmatic and normative mythologisation,’ said Michele in a letter distributed to guests, which included longtime muses Harry Styles and Elton John. ‘I rather allude to that unique capability to deeply feel and connect with something.’

The show took place in the Dojo de Paris, a judo stadium in the 14th arrondissement on the city’s outer reaches. Transformed beyond recognition, the low-lit space featured a scattering of furniture and lamps covered with dust sheets, while the runway itself had the appearance of a shattered mirror. Of that, Michele – in typically esoteric style – said that ‘we are are fragile creatures, constantly exposed to the sense of limit… we tiptoe on mirrors that shatter under our weight… as we walk, no step comes without the risk of stumbling and falling.’ (Like at Gucci, his collection notes were more like a philosophical musing, here quoting Martin Heidegger’s concept of ‘alètheia’, Théophile Gautier and Michel de Montaigne).

Inside Alessandro Michele’s debut show for Valentino

The collection itself evoked the eclectic, romantic – and oftentimes idiosyncratic – design signatures honed at Gucci, though there was certainly an influence from the house’s archive, as well as the bourgeois dress codes of Rome, where Valentino Garavani founded the house in the 1960s. It began with the crunch of broken glass, as out stepped the collection’s first look: a ruffled-hem black dress with a white bib and bows, worn with coloured tights and heeled pumps (bows would be a motif which ran throughout). Elsewhere looks for men and women – a continuation of his co-ed approach at Gucci – spanned romantic, marabou-trimmed gowns adorned with ruffles, louche tailoring and billowing kaftan-style tops. Floral motifs and polka dots featured across the collection.

There were also moments of play and subversion: models wore dramatic facial piercings, which appeared from ears and across noses, even the chin, while a clutch bag was evocative of a china cat. Other accessories included enormous wide-brimmed hats, some with plumes of feathers, and an array of new handbag propositions. Mostly riffs on vintage, ladylike styles – whether top-handle or flap fastening and slung over the shoulder – they came adorned with the Valentino ‘V’ motif, gobstopper studs, or in mock croc. Given his success in revitalising handbags from the Gucci archive, these will no doubt prove popular.

Michele was hired to replace Pierpaolo Piccioli, who exited Valentino earlier this year. As a designer from Rome, Michele felt an apt fit. ‘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,’ he said on his appointment in March of this year, the latter a reference to Garavani’s longtime partner and Valentino co-founder. ‘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.’

‘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,’ he continued. This afternoon, he made his own pitch for Valentino, placing a pursuit of beauty at its centre – a vision of otherworldly romance which is entirely his own.

valentino.com

Just under a week since the announcement of Pierpaolo Piccioli’s departure from Valentino, the Roman house has announced the designer’s successor: Alessandro Michele, former creative director of Gucci, who exited the Italian label in November 2022. 

Michele, who was born in Rome, was one of the names that have circulated in the days since Piccioli’s announcement; having left Gucci, he is yet to have undertaken any other role at a fashion house, and has retained a low profile. This new appointment will see Michele present haute couture for the first time, alongside ready-to-wear for men and women, and will be effective from April 2024 (though his debut will not be shown until later in the year, as part of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2025).

‘It’s an incredible honour for me to be welcomed at Maison Valentino. 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,’ said Michele in a statement issued this afternoon (28 March).

Alessandro Michele is Valentino’s new creative director

‘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,’ he continued, while also thanking Rachid Mohamed Rachid, Valentino’s chairman, and the house’s CEO Jacopo Venturini. ‘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.’

Michele is best known for a transformative tenure at Gucci, which ushered in a new maximal aesthetic infused with a languid romance and informed by eclectic inspirations which traversed eras and cultural touchpoints. Having worked as part of the design team for two decades under Tom Ford and Frida Giannini, his first collection of menswear – originally presumed to be a placeholder role – comprised pussy-bow blouses, fur-lined backless loafers, and 1970s silhouettes and would prove an instant success. Just a year later, in its October 2016 issue, Wallpaper* highlighted Michele as a ‘Game-Changer’, in the years that followed, he went on to transform the house’s financial fortunes and dress a roster of high-profile clients, from Harry Styles to Lana Del Rey.

After his 2022 departure from Gucci, he was replaced by current creative director (himself formerly of Valentino) Sabato de Sarno.

‘For the last 12 years, as a team, we dedicated our time and resources to develop the Maison Valentino brand and business to become a world-class couture house built on the unique heritage and creativity of Mr Valentino Garavani, representing the best world of elegance and beauty,’ added Rachid.

‘The appointment of Alessandro Michele marks another pivotal moment for Maison Valentino. Michele is an exceptional talent and his appointment underlines our great ambitions for Maison Valentino. I strongly believe that with his unique creativity and sensibility, he will continue the elevation of the brand’s everlasting heritage and unique Italian maison de couture identity.’

valentino.com

Alessandro Michele is set to leave Gucci, the Italian house confirmed yesterday evening (23 November 2022). The Rome-born designer, who took over from forebear Frida Giannini in 2015, has transformed Gucci in his seven-year tenure with eclectic, transporting collections that cross eras, continents and cultural touchpoints in their inspirations. Outside of clothing, his imaginative approach has influenced all areas of the house, from the introduction of Gucci beauty to homeware and high jewellery. François-Henri Pinault, chair and chief executive of Kering – the luxury goods conglomerate that owns Gucci – thanked Michele in a statement. ‘His passion, his imagination, his ingenuity and his culture put Gucci centre stage, where its place is.’

‘Today an extraordinary journey ends for me, lasting more than 20 years, within a company to which I have tirelessly dedicated all my love and creative passion,’ said Michele in his own statement on Instagram. ‘During this long period Gucci has been my home, my adopted family. To this extended family, to all the individuals, who have looked after and supported it, I send my most sincere thanks, my biggest and most heartfelt embrace.

Alessandro Michele to exit Gucci after seven-year tenure

‘Together with them I have wished, dreamed, imagined. Without them, none of what I have built would have been possible. To them goes my most [sincere] wish: may you continue to cultivate your dreams, the subtle and intangible matter that makes life worth living. May you continue to nourish yourselves with poetic and inclusive imagery, remaining faithful to your values. May you always live by your passions, propelled by the wind of freedom.’

Michele was originally hired by Tom Ford two decades ago to focus on accessories; a longtime member of the Gucci team, his appointment in 2015 came as a surprise to the industry. But a languid, romantic first collection – an A/W 2015 menswear collection created in just five days – set the blueprint for his approach, blurring lines of gender with 1970s-inspired silhouettes (a silk pussy-bow blouse, fur-lined open-back loafers, and use of lace would all become signatures). Just a year later, in its October 2016 issue, Wallpaper* highlighted Michele as a ‘Game-Changer’.

The collections that followed drew from increasingly expansive inspiration points – from neoclassical Rome to the Golden Age of Hollywood – in dramatic runway presentations that have taken place in cities around the world, including Milan, Paris, Los Angeles and the designer’s native Rome. A raft of celebrities and cultural figures have adopted the brand under his tenure, perhaps most notably the musician Harry Styles, who recently collaborated with Michele on Ha Ha Ha, a capsule collection of clothing. Michele’s last runway show, during Milan Fashion Week S/S 2023, featured 68 pairs of twins in identical looks – a gesture he dedicated to his mother, who was a twin herself.

‘I am a son of two mothers: mum Eralda and mum Giuliana. They were magically mirrored. One multiplied the other. That was my world, perfectly double and doubled,’ he said.

Michele has enjoyed a rare combination of critical and commercial success, with the revenue of the house reportedly tripling during his tenure, according to Business of Fashion. As of yet, there is no word as to who will replace Michele at Gucci. The house is scheduled to show a collection in January 2023.

The pre-amble to last nights Gucci Resort show included a journey through the marvels of renaissance Florence. Setting off with a private tour of the Uffizi Gallery, built in the mid-16th century for Cosimo I de’ Medici by architect Giorgio Vasari, this was a rare opportunity to see Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus unobstructed by the usual crowds.

Then a rarer chance still, to walk the 1565 Vasari corridor, currently booked up until 2019, to view the collection of self-portraits from the likes of Rubens to Pistoletto. The corridor – at almost 1km long – was built to allow Francesco I de’ Medici to cross from the Uffizi on the north side of the Arno river, to Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli gardens in the south, without him being subject to the prying eyes of the public.

The show itself was held in the Palatina Gallery of the Palazzo Pitti beneath more than 500 Renaissance period works that once formed part of the Medici and Habsburg-Lorraine family collections. Among the Raphaels, Titians, Peruginos, Correggios, and Peter Paul Rubens, creative director Alessandro Michele’s 115-strong gang of models, paced a bright yellow carpet to a sound track mixed with live harpists.

Michele is a bit of an alchemist, and he makes his own kind of magic. There was definitely a touch of renaissance in the mix, and perhaps something lifted from the wax models in La Specola (or, the Museum of Zoology and Natural History), just up the road. Golden garlands in the hair (and hands) bore reference to ancient Greece, alongside other influences from almost every decade of the 20th century. From Michele’s very own kind of enchanted garden came forth prints, brocades, damasks, embroideries as well as jewellery and hardware featuring flowers, foliage, bugs and beasts.

The show was followed by dinner and music from Beth Ditto in the Torrigiani Garden, the largest privately owned garden in Florence which is a neighbour of the Boboli gardens. It brings us back to why Gucci held its show in the city in the first place. Fashion houses scour the planet for interesting locations for their cruise shows and under Alessandro Michele’s stewardship Gucci has been on the streets of New York and the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. This season alone, Prada showed in Milan’s historic Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II; Dior in the hills above Santa Monica; and Louis Vuitton in the Miho Museum in Kyoto. Gucci’s Resort 2018 choice was particularly relevant.

Aside from the fact that Guccio Gucci chose Florence as his base in 1921, a city that continues to thrive as a centre of excellence for leather goods, the show was also the official launch pad for Primavera di Boboli, (springtime in the Boboli gardens), where Gucci is contributing €2m to the Uffizi Gallery to restore and improve the Boboli gardens, the 33-hectare garden that extends from the hill behind the Pitti Palace as far as Porta Romana and one of the most important of the ‘formal’ 16th century Italian gardens.  

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Gucci website

Alessandro Michele’s Gucci is a harbinger of change in the fashion industry. In barely 18 months, his work has perceptibly moved goalposts and his impact is hard to overstate, certainly when it comes to recent fashion. Indeed, you’d have to dive back to the 1990s to find anything similar. Ironically, if you do so, you’ll find it was once again at Gucci that the status quo shifted, under the tenure of Tom Ford. Exactly 20 years apart, both used the Italian leather goods behemoth to ring in the changes, to provoke, challenge and ultimately seduce. Both have proved, within the space of mere seasons, to be the dominant fashion stories of their respective periods.

Michele and Ford’s visions for Gucci, on the surface, are polar opposites. Indeed, Michele’s obsession is with elaborating his surfaces, in homage to the Italiano eccentrico styles commonly associated with designers like Walter Albini, the interwar couturier Elsa Schiaparelli or the Milanese fashion editor Anna Piaggi. It stands in stark contrast to Ford’s midcentury modern-tinged minimalism, the sartorial equivalent of an Eames lounger, of lean tailoring and jersey evening dresses with insets of metal. Slick was the word most often used to describe Ford’s vision for Gucci, from the shiny polished catwalks of his biannual shows through to the glistening double-G insignias dripping from bags and belts. There’s nothing slick about what Michele does – it’s more sick, a mix of oddball references and strange proportions that have some beauty to them, to hamfistedly paraphrase Sir Francis Bacon.

Yet there are threads that run through both, weaving these two disparate versions of Gucci tightly together. Both, for instance, are obsessed with the 1970s: Ford harking back to the clingy jersey clothes of Halston, dressing a Studio 54-roaming glamourpuss; Michele to something more downbeat, less polished.

‘The 1970s is the most powerful image, for me, for the brand,’ Michele tells me after his winter 2016 menswear show. ‘Its soul is really that 1970s moment, that jet-set. It’s something that lets you dream.’ Michele dreams of a decorated, flamboyant 1970s a million miles from Ford’s American-bred but European-polished glamour. But their silhouettes – kicked-out flares, column evening dresses, the short, broad-shouldered fur jackets known as chubbies that owe a debt to the architect of the decade, Yves Saint Laurent – are similar.

But then, Ford, after all, was Michele’s mentor, recruiting him to the label in 2002. Michele has paid overt homage in numerous ways: his first menswear show in January 2015 featured model Molly Bair in a petrol-blue silk-satin shirt with black trousers and a double-G belt, a direct throwback to Ford’s A/W 1995 Gucci show, where Kate Moss (and later Madonna) sported a near identical outfit. More recently, a bevy of Ford’s greatest Gucci hits – embroidered denim jeans, cherry-red and inky velvet trouser suits, those white jersey Halston redux dresses – has been installed, at Michele’s behest, at the Gucci Museo.

Both Michele and Ford think further than fashion. Ford’s Mario Testino-shot advertising campaigns of the 1990s weren’t just trying to hawk a bunch of clothes, but a set of ideals. Gucci may not have made the furniture the models sprawled across, but you still wanted to buy it. Later, Gucci sold branded spanking-paddles, dog-collars and handcuffs – a sexual decadence synonymous with Ford’s fashions. Michele is creative director of the Italian fine porcelain brand Richard Ginori. The latest range of Ginori plates, hand-painted with the kind of exotically plumed parrots that flock his clothes, are his postmodern spanking paddle.

Ironically, for all that aforementioned sex, there was a sense of androgyny to Ford’s Gucci. Those advertising campaigns frequently featured writhing bodies entwined to the point of gender ambiguity: guys, girls, or both? For A/W 1996, Georgina Grenville and Ludovico Benazzo embraced dressed identically in pinstripe trouser suits, shirts open to the navel. Michele’s Gucci, too, is obsessed with blurring distinction between the sexes – his A/W 2015 menswear show saw long-haired boys and gangly girls mixed on the catwalk to a point of glorious confusion.

The element that most unifies Ford and Michele, though, is their complex, consummate and complete vision for Gucci. From the brand’s boutiques (minimalist temples under Ford; maximalist boudoirs under Michele) to the clothes’ packaging (Michele’s shoeboxes roam with Victoriana jungle murals; Ford sold sheer underwear in Perspex boxes) every facet expresses a breathtaking totality of aesthetic. It’s not lifestyle they’re selling, so much as a style of life. It worked in 1996, and it’s working again today.

Tom Ford and Alessandro Michele are part of our 20 Game-Changers. Read about the other 19 here

As originally featured in the October 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*211)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Gucci website

When approaching the Chinese market, luxury houses tend to look to the past, emphasising the brand's heritage and authenticity by delving into the archives. 

Alessandro Michele’s tenure as creative director has seen a reinvention of the Gucci vision which has been universally acclaimed. His first exhibition, at the Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai, shuns all the usual exhibition tropes. 

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's What is the Contemporary? is a book that has deeply influenced Michele and his collections for Gucci. He and co-curator Katie Grand use Agamben's ideas to explore the notion of 'contemporary', and the complicated and contradictory concept of time within the fashion industry.

‘After the first women’s fashion show we wanted to do something in Asia and I talked with Katie [Grand] about bringing together artists to open up the conversation on the contemporary,' explains Michele. 'Philosophy can give you the opportunity to reflect and be curious.’

Seven Chinese and international artists use installations, photography, paintings and sound design to explore this concept, alongside the quotidian normality of fashion. Gucci's involvement is deft, and the artists are at the forefront: radically different to previous exhibitions brought to mainland China.

Multimedia artist Cao Fei comments on China’s rapid urban expansion, showing video footage featuring the area surrounding her studio being destroyed alongside an army of robot vacuum cleaners repeatedly sweeping a Gucci carpet.

Nigel Shafran’s images document the creative processes that lie behind the nine month lead-in to Michele's current collection. 'How,' he asks, 'can a designer pre-figure the contemporary?'

Unskilled Worker, an artist Michele discovered on Instagram, has created a series of naive portraits depicting subjects wearing Gucci. ‘It’s a work in progress between real life and social media,' Michele reveals. 'It’s a fresco of my life with the company.’

‘What we were trying to do was provoke a question,' adds Grand. 'It felt like the right time to do a different kind of exhibition.’

Trying to predict the elusive pulse of the contemporary is a gamble. Staging a Gucci exhibition with no actual fashion content is even more so. Let's hope Michele's bold move fuses the creative, the contemporary and the commercial. 

INFORMATION
’No Longer/Not Yet’ is on view until 16 December

ADDRESS

Minsheng Art Museum
Building F, Red Town
570 West Huaihai Road, Shanghai

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