A Tribute to Rome: Valentino Presents 'Avant Les Débuts'
When Valentino announced Alessandro Michele as its creative director earlier this year, the news had many on the edge of their seats as those of the designers at the heads of fashion’s biggest houses kept spinning at dizzying speeds. But for all the whirl a twirl of fashion’s recent change of guard, Michele’s was perhaps most vertiginous. He, who had built his fame turning the awkward into the alluring and the outcast into the icon, came back into fashion’s focus at the center of the limelight, reimagining the jet-set glamour that gave one of the most prolific Maisons its name.
Then, Valentino entered a new territory. And while the mere visualization of it with Michele’s geek-chic coded oeuvre at the helm of it all might as well have placed it on another planet, rest assured, it was all, irrefutably, very Valentino—down to the romantic ruffles in full bloom and bohemian textiles pulsing with psychedelia. Presented through the glossy cellophane of Polaroid shots, 'Avant Les Débuts,' the Spring 2025 collection, spanning 171 looks, ascertained Michele made himself at home. The grandeur of noirish femme fatales and demimondaines glistened in opulent evening ensembles with effusive displays of glamour, bursting from shimmering beadings and embroideries. Through the fun house mirrors of Michele’s imagination, lapels were stretched here, and silhouettes were widened there. It was all dazzling. And well-studied for interpreting a library’s worth of source material, such as the archives of Valentino, into something new is a task few designers could handle with the aplomb of its new creative director. 'Avant Les Débuts,' the campaign, adds yet another Valentino-ism to the equation, just in case those stitched into its garments weren’t enough.
Starting from the storied brand’s headquarters, Mignanelli Palace, expanding outwards and over the Eternal City, the campaign is an ode to Rome: the city where it all began. A homecoming of sorts, the campaign had Michele reflecting on his birthplace, perusing through the seminal figures of Italian cinema: the neorealism of Visconti, the sublime symbolism of Bergman—finally arriving at the magical realism of Fellini, whose 1972 film Roma burns at the core of the campaign. “Federico 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,” Michele noted. “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.”
In the very spirit of that noblewoman, models were photographed in intimate proximity; behind each glance, a mystery lingers, not unlike the silver screen darlings of Fellini’s world, tempting onlookers to question more, to know more. “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,” shared Michele. “A convivium of the human celebrating the art of the feast.” And what a feast!
Discover Michele's Avant Les Débuts here!
