Alessandro Michele Reimagines Valentino's Legacy in 'Avant Les Debuts'
In a bold fusion of heritage and innovation, Alessandro Michele's inaugural pre-collection for Valentino emerges as a masterclass in artistic storytelling. The legendary Italian fashion house's new creative director orchestrates a cinematic journey through Rome, weaving together threads of history and modernity in a collection that both honors and revolutionizes the Valentino legacy.
"When we move, there is always a house we leave behind and a new one where we decide to dwell. It’s a ritual where, simultaneously, something is abandoned and something else is taken. There is the parting and the catch, the farewell and the welcome. Through this exercise of displacement and metamorphosis, we allow ourselves to explore original determinations in dialogue with the new spaces we settle in.
We know: when crossing an unknown threshold, we immediately dive into the traces of past experiences that preceded us, in the memories that time deposited, layer after layer. Such memories have unexpressed life potential because they hold a core of further possibilities ready to be reactivated. In every new house we will inhabit, in fact, the relationship with its past will never be an act of mere contemplation, rather of reinvention.
In this delicate passage of memorial revisitation, I tried to reimagine Maison Valentino, starting from the mythical Mignanelli palace, historical headquarters of the brand. In my oneiric transposition, the front door of this ancient Roman palace becomes the portal leading to a house populated by eccentric, uninhibited, eclectic humanity. A convivium of the human celebrating the art of the feast.
Here we meet visionary and worldly artists, glamorous cinema queens with their eternal and magnetic allure, grotesque prelates and the fascinating heiresses of a declining nobility. These are all actors in a living comedy embodying the vibrant and libertarian soul of a city, Rome, to which I wanted to pay tribute, stemming from the love that has always bound Rome and Valentino Garavani.
To build such a praise, I couldn't avoid stealing Federico Fellini’s words to Anna Magnani, when he salutes her on the doorstep at the end of the film Roma. It’s nighttime, the bells of a church and the footsteps on the ancient pebbles are the only sounds of the city. The voice of the director fondly caresses the Roman actress, celebrating her as “the symbol of the city: Rome, seen both as a she-wolf and a vestal, aristocratic and ragged, gloomy and clownish”.
Fellini couldn't have been more accurate, because Rome has this precise paradoxical nature. It’s a saint a whore, mother and stepmother, governmental and anarchic, cosmopolitan and provincial. It’s the place where blasphemies and rosaries coexist, where history merges with everyday life and beauty is anchored to the ground by a polytheistic antiquity, by a world still not completely abolished. Rome, in the end, is a fading noblewoman still full of charm.
I wanted to recreate that felliniesque scene. The camera lingers on a girl going back home as she walks along the wall of an ancient Roman palace, followed by some pugs: fraternal creatures so symbolically tied to the figure of Valentino Garavani. Together they pass through that legendary front door that the founder of the maison must have crossed a thousand times. On that threshold, the street makes contact with the glitter of the aristocracy, the low with the high, the profane with the sacred, the outside with the inside. It’s the entire city that joyfully bursts into a domestic space.
I needed a cinematographic language to tell the story of this new home. An aesthetics suspended between the neorealism of Luchino Visconti, the visual symbolism of Bergman and the magic realism of Fellini. I was looking for a patina that evoked the Rome of cinema, with its aura and its iconic tones. I wanted the result to truly appear as a fragment of a film where the Dionysian atmosphere of a bacchanalia of the ancient Rome relived in the splendor of the seventies, getting to contaminate our present. A present that is untimely, misaligned, anachronistic and, because of that, extremely contemporary."
Alessandro
A Cinematic Vision by Glen Luchford
Acclaimed photographer Glen Luchford brings Michele's vision to life through a captivating campaign that transcends traditional fashion imagery. The accompanying video serves as a time-bending exploration of Rome, the eternal city that has long been synonymous with Valentino's identity. Luchford's lens captures the essence of Michele's creative direction, where each frame tells a story of transformation and continuity.
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Heritage Meets Contemporary Expression
Michele's "AVANT LES DÉBUTS" collection stands as a testament to his unique ability to balance reverence for Valentino's rich history with his own revolutionary perspective on fashion. The collection features sumptuous garments rich in historical references, yet imbued with contemporary design elements that bring fresh energy to each piece. It is, at its core, a celebration of freedom in fashion expression, with unconventional styling that challenges traditional norms while paying homage to the house's illustrious past.
The New Valentino Narrative
Under Michele's guidance, Valentino embarks on a new chapter where fashion transcends mere aesthetics to become a powerful medium of artistic expression. The collection serves as a platform for exploring plural identities, a vehicle for emotional storytelling, and a bridge between collective memory and future vision. In this new era, each garment becomes more than fabric and thread—it becomes a statement, a question, an invitation to dialogue.
The decision to present the collection through a cinematic lens is deliberate and profound. Michele transforms each garment into a character, every outfit into a narrative, creating a fashion experience that evokes deep emotions and awakens shared memories. Through this visual storytelling, he opens new perspectives on luxury fashion, inviting viewers to engage with clothing on a deeper, more meaningful level.
Alessandro Michele's approach to Valentino's DNA is nothing short of masterful. By infusing the house's iconic elements with his singular vision, he invites audiences to participate in a larger narrative where fashion becomes an immersive art form. His interpretation respects the past while boldly stepping into the future, creating a dialogue between different eras of style and design that feels both timeless and thoroughly modern.
