It isn’t designed for subtlety—it’s meant to be felt.
Alessandro Michele does not whisper, he shouts. And for his first couture collection at Valentino, titled Vertigineux (meaning “dizzy” in French), he took the house’s romantic legacy, drowned it in history, and sent it marching down the runway at Palais Brongniart like a glorious hallucination.
Guests received invitations in the form of a scented soap, hinting at the sensory overload to come. The runway featured a massive digital screen flashing words like arsenic, harlequin, Roman cinema, bourgeoisie, Vitruvian bustier, gothic veils, a preview of the collection’s wildly eclectic references.
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Michele rooted the collection in the philosophy of Umberto Eco’s The Infinity of Lists, a meditation on how humans attempt to grasp the infinite through enumeration. “The list does not destroy culture, it creates it,” Eco once wrote, and Michele took this idea to heart.
Each of the 48 couture looks functioned as its own catalog of history, botany, cinema, philosophy, and personal memory. The opening look, which took 1,300 hours to make, set the tone. A flowing tulle gown inspired by 18th-century harlequin costumes, with exaggerated silhouettes.
From there, the collection unfolded into an array of puffed sleeves and grand ruffles. The palette leaned mostly on nostalgia too, ivories, pastels, silvers, and deep reds.
Michele injected a sense of chaos, a joyful disorder that made everything feel urgent and alive. Patchwork, embroidery, and quilting (which, historically, used to tell stories through garments) were abundant. A floor-length cape in muted gold (and is entirely hand-quilted!) recalled ancient times. A minidress adorned with florals looked like something plucked from an aristocrat’s boudoir and repurposed for the 21st century.
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The accessories too, were just as striking: masks, elaborate headpieces, and oversized jewelry that blurred the line between fashion and art.
At its core, Vertigineux was a rebellion against fashion’s growing minimalism. In a world of AI-generated trends and quick consumption, Michele offered couture in its purest, most indulgent form.
While the collection’s historical mash-ups and excess might not be for everyone, that was actually the point. It wasn’t designed for subtlety, it was meant to be felt.
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Watch the full show below:
All images from Maison Valentino
