Eternal flame: Valentino returns to Rome

A 17th-century palazzo carpeted in astroturf for the catwalk, a star-studded front row including Gwyneth Paltrow, Coleman Domingo and Tyla, and an afterparty at the infamous Casino dell’Aurora di Ludovisi Boncompagni (home to a secret Caravaggio fresco) with a set by Lily Allen. Valentino creative director Alessandro Michele pulled out all the stops for his show last Thursday night in Rome, bringing down the curtain on Milan's fashion week in spectacular style. The event marked a poignant return to the Eternal City where the label was founded by Valentino Garavani and his partner Giancarlo Giammetti in 1959. While the brand held its haute couture show on the Spanish Steps in 2022, it usually shows its ready-to-wear collections in Paris. Following Garavani’s death in January at the age of 93, the location proved to be both tribute and celebration of the continuing Valentino legacy. “I’m very happy that we are in Rome, it’s a nice homage to the city and also to us,” Giammetti told reporters backstage.

Michele, who was appointed creative director of the fashion house in April 2024, is also a son of Rome and knows how to find the sweet spot between the city’s aristocratic glamour and its grittier IRL street style. It’s a tension that the former Gucci designer sought to address in his setting for the show, the Palazzo Barberini. Currently home to the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, it is famous for its clashing architecture by the Baroque-era rivals Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini. “I chose this place because it's a place that has these two incredible escalators from two incredible artists. They really represent the beauty of the chaos with these very intriguing steps [by Bernini on one side]. On the other side, you have the passion of Boromini,” said Michele. “I think this is almost my job, you know, to make and to create the tension and the dialogue between different things.”

On the runway, Michele did just that, leaning into the 1980s, a prolific era of creation under founder Garavani, but one that has been left "undiscovered" in the archive under the tenures of successive creative directors, but putting it through a refined 2026 filter.  “In the 1980s and 1990s, Valentino was still working like crazy and making [beauty] from his hands,” said Michele. “That was a time also for a very specific and incredible image. Every single brand had their own language. There was no confusion. Nothing was foggy. The 80s, where the time of positivity, shining cultural things and incredible and unbelievable things.” It translated to pleated silk shirts with pintucked trousers teamed with New Balance trainers; mini dresses worn with statement cummerbunds; big shoulders and even bigger sunglasses. The line of eveningwear that both Valentino and Michele are famed and relied upon for by their high-net-worth clientele, included tiered crystal trousers, mini dresses with lace bodysuits and swathes of pleated taffeta forming a big bow at the hip, and a backless bejewelled dress in the house’s signature Valentino Red to close the show.

In a savvy move, the collection also saw the inclusion of zeitgeist details currently proving popular with the Gen-Z audience that is increasingly shopping vintage Valentino, among other brands. Studded belts, patchwork leather handbags, jeggings, and the brand’s most famous shoe in the archive, the Mary-Jane Rockstud all made the cut here. Relating the collection back to his own memory of the 1980s, Michele was reflective. “I was a young guy and I remember it very well in Rome. It was an incredible city and people really cared about what was going on in a very deep way. Women were really conscious about their presence, their bodies. I remember also my mum - after the 70s she was really in control of her body and her presence. That's something that Valentino knows. Empowerment.”

Michele was keen to acknowledge the timing of holding a glitzy fashion show in the current political climate. “Yes, it's a very strange moment,” he said, when asked. “Not just for me, because working in fashion where when there is a war outside - not easy. But I think I have a kind of a mission. I can do justice. Nothing else. I think that we have to fight, to do what we want to do. I think that we have to fight to say what we want to say. And be sincere with yourselves.”

Photographs: Getty Images