Alessandro Michele transforms the latest Valentino show into a giant public toilet

A single watchword seemed to reign over the new Valentino show held this Sunday in Paris: intimacy. The presentation of the latest fall-winter 2025-2026 collection was not private given the crowd of curious people who had gathered outside the Sorbonne University where the show was taking place. For his third show as artistic director of the Roman luxury house, Alessandro Michele had pushed this idea of intimacy to its paroxysm by transforming the space of his show into a public toilet.

“I imagined this counter-place that neutralizes and suspends the dualism between interior and exterior, between what is intimate and what is exhibited, between the personal and the collection, between what remains private and what we want to share,” said Alessandro Michele on the press release placed on the seats in the middle of the room. Everywhere along the walls, American-style toilets – openings at the top and bottom – had been lined up as guests took their seats in the half-light of the red neon lights invading the space.

Alessandro Michele, appointed artistic director of Valentino just a year ago, is far from being stingy with surprises and it is an understatement to say that he has a sense of showmanship. A few weeks ago, the man who made the heyday of Gucci between 2015 and 2022, for example, transported his guests under the stroboscopes of his own cerebral cortex to present his first haute couture show. For this fall-winter 2025-2026 collection, the Italian designer has exploited this intimacy by considering it as a theater where personalities mix, “between clothing and undressing” as he himself says.

Under the techno bass mixed with tracks by the American singer Lana Del Rey – a close and fervent admirer of Alessandro Michele’s work – the 80 silhouettes of this new collection gradually emerged, each in turn, from the different doors of the toilets. Dubbed king of baroque, maximalist and opulent fashion, the 52-year-old designer has applied himself to creating what he knows how to do best: poetry.

For men, the idea of a “Valentino by Alessandro Michele” uniform seems to be taking shape: pleated trousers are wide and comfortable; the shirt is available in an XXL pie server collar and can be worn with a patterned tie, under a cardigan, a sweater or even a T-shirt; the coats borrow from the feminine codes of those you would meet on Italian grandmothers in the streets of Rome. One of them is even revised and corrected using Valentino’s famous Rosso red.

As a winter collection, Alessandro Michele has also distilled an idea of protection through his new wardrobe. Most of his models are hooded, sometimes with a simple black cap, sometimes with a lace version. Many of them also wore black stand-up collars, as if they were wearing a survival layer on the surface to protect the designer’s intimacy. This “meta-theatre”, as the latter indicates in the notes of the show, seems to have won over the audience, which did not fail to welcome the designer’s greeting with thunderous applause. This confirms that Alessandro Michele has indeed found his place at Valentino.