PFW: The Theatre Of The Self At Valentino Fall/Winter 2025

In Paris, Alessandro Michele gets philosophical, probing questions of authenticity with dramatic flair

In his shownotes for Fall/Winter 2025, Alessandro Michele speaks of the “unspeakable desire to unify the irreducible kaleidoscope of our self” as an exercise in futility, exclaiming an ‘authentic self’, one untouched by the sticky fingers of societal influence, as a myth.

Blurring the lines between the private and the public, a public bathroom—in all its clinical, fluorescent-lit glory—became the unexpected runway for the designer’s second ready-to-wear collection for Valentino. And in this liminal space, where identity—and its many elements—is both liberated and reconfigured, hidden and exposed, Michele mediates on performance as pure intimacy and the fundamental question: Who are we?

Much like the setting and Michele himself, the clothes rejected simplicity. In exploring intimacy as a theatre of transformation, this season saw an assemblage of eclectic pairings, with layers upon layers tactfully masking, revealing and styling that imparted a sense of unplacability. Voluminous coats swallowed the body whole, only to be undone with a single movement, revealing delicate slip dresses in liquid-like silk. Textures clashed like opposing identities: structured wool met sheer organza, sculpted leather dissolved into barely-there chiffon. Velvet opera gloves stretched past the elbows, while oppulent embellishments grazed fluffy trims. A palette of inky blacks, dusty rose, deep plum, and ghostly whites was punctuated by flashes of Valentino red—reinvigorated by its new chapter.

As models paused under the harsh glow of bathroom mirrors, adjusting collars, tightening belts, tousling hair, the act of dressing reflected a ritual of self-creation. Here, in a manner most Lynchian, identity is never fixed, only pieced together through pieces of codified performance—layered and shifting like a narrative with no final act.

While he doesn’t posit to know what it all means, Michele invites us all to embrace the theatre of existence and let go of fixed senses of self. As a designer known for his whimsical creativity and campy grandeur, he suggests that perhaps it’s all just costumes and masks and that there is a beauty in the freedom to be who we want to be whenever we want to be it.