Valentino Spring/Summer 2027 - Inside Alessandro Michele’s Antibiblioteca

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A review of the Valentino Spring/Summer 2027 by Alessandro Michele

Valentino Spring/Summer 2027 Opens the Unread Wardrobe

LE MILE

Long reading tables ran beneath green lamps, surrounded by shelves in the vast 19th-century room. The Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève gave Valentino’s Spring/Summer 2027 show a setting already dense with its own rituals, which Alessandro Michele quickly disturbed with strobe lights and Troye Sivan’s “Party” playing on loop. Guests arrived carrying books of their own, which were collected at the entrance for donation after the show.

Valentino Spring Summer 2027
/ Antibiblioteca by Alessandro Michele

Valentino Spring Summer 2027
/ Antibiblioteca by Alessandro Michele at Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève

Valentino Spring Summer 2027
/ Antibiblioteca by Alessandro Michele

Valentino Spring Summer 2027
/ Antibiblioteca by Alessandro Michele

He called the collection Antibiblioteca, taking its name from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s account of Umberto Eco’s personal library of some 30,000 books. Taleb was fascinated by the unread volumes and the knowledge they still contained. Michele transferred that idea to fashion, imagining clothes as carriers of lives still available to us. His notes also refer to the Japanese practice of tsundoku, the accumulation of unread books, and to Giorgio Agamben’s writing on potentiality. Across 80 looks, the runway became Michele’s own catalogue of possibilities. The opening established a silhouette around jewel-toned satin bustiers worn with knee-length skirts in crinkled crepon and floral silk dévoré. Leather entered the sequence with a harder surface, and feathered hems changed the line around the leg as the models walked. The exposed torso brought a directness to the collection. An ’80s-shaped jacket set with jewel buttons appeared over lace biker shorts, and a hot-pink strapless gown revealed a circular ruffle at the back as it turned, finished with an enormous black bow.

Double-breasted jackets were deliberately fastened off-centre, gathering fabric around the waist, while silk boxers rose high above trouser waistbands. Baseball caps printed with “Villain Teen” cut through the tailoring with the kind of peculiar humour that has followed Michele throughout his career. Jewellery became part of the silhouette, with long strands of pearls and oversized crystal pieces covering shirts or bare skin.

Valentino Spring Summer 2027
/ Antibiblioteca by Alessandro Michele

Satin columns allowed their construction to hold attention, while ruffles and rhinestones appeared elsewhere with greater theatricality. A black velvet dress plunging to the navel was covered at the neckline with gold and pearls, giving the body a strong frame without burying the dress itself. Here Michele’s instinct for decoration found a convincing scale within Valentino, a house whose founder understood glamour as something immediately visible across a room.This was Michele’s fourth ready-to-wear collection since taking over Valentino in 2024. The 80-look length occasionally blurred its focus, though the bustier silhouettes and evening dresses gave the collection a strong centre. Michele filled the library with possible lives and gave his appetite for abundance a reason to remain open-ended. The unread wardrobe, in his hands, still has plenty left on its shelves.

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all images (c) Valentino Press

Valentino Fall 25 Campaign

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*New Campaign
VALENTINO Fall 2025
Chez Valentino: A Still World

written Alban E. Smajli

A figure pauses inside a diner. Outside, a horse walks past. A bowl of ice cream melts slowly in a hand. Each moment unfolds without hurry. Each frame stays still, long enough for the viewer to feel it.

The Valentino Fall 25 ADV campaign opens with a fixed gaze. Directed by Glen Luchford and shaped by the vision of Alessandro Michele, the campaign introduces a new rhythm. The world is quiet, grounded in repetition and gesture. This rhythm carries through every element—from styling to set design, from casting to soundtrack.

The scenes exist as fragments of a larger fabric. A lavender heel rests on the edge of a step. A parrot perches beside embroidered fabric. Denim falls over worn tile. A varsity sweater with “CHEZ VALENTINO” stitched across the chest becomes part of the space around it. No hierarchy, no accent—only layers.

Jonathan Kaye’s styling anchors this language. Leopard prints, lace gloves, school socks, floral jacquards—each piece chosen to inhabit a mood. The silhouettes carry weight, softness, eccentricity, repetition. Hair by Paul Hanlon and makeup by Yadim Carranza follow the same path: clear, finished, quiet. Faces hold time. Eyes stay in place. Nothing interrupts.

The setting builds this continuity. An American-style diner, faded and sunlit, contains the action. A bar, a sidewalk, a bicycle. Elements repeat. Light falls evenly. Set designer Gideon Ponte constructs a container for gesture.

In his campaign note, Alessandro Michele writes of attention. His words shape the framework: “a policy of attention, an ethics for the gaze.” He draws focus toward gestures, toward morning light, toward a door that opens and closes. The camera remains fixed. The world continues moving inside it.

The talent list includes Amelia Gray, Sophie Thatcher, Kai Schreiber, Lorenzo Zurzolo, and others. Their presence offers texture. Their movement—slow, occasional, internal—forms the pulse of the campaign. Each person belongs to the scene. No character. No pose. Just observation.

Fabric plays its own role. A glittering Mary Jane steps onto concrete. Fringes catch wind. Mesh, velvet, satin, cotton—each fabric marks the body differently, holds the light differently. Each piece expands the world around it. Clothing becomes the pace.

Music by Juliette Armanet supports this tempo. Imaginer l’Amour plays softly, connecting one frame to the next. It opens space and adds tone without direction.

Repetition forms the spine of the campaign. A frame. A gesture. A return. This structure creates clarity. There is no build-up, no conclusion, but only movement held in place. Time stretches. The Valentino Fall 25 campaign offers an aesthetic grounded in the everyday. The material speaks directly. The vision lingers. There is no urgency, no volume, no interruption.

Michele draws from observation, not intervention. The everyday becomes the shape. The rhythm becomes the message. Stillness becomes the container. Each choice—from casting to color, from cut to frame—builds this language. The world appears complete. Within this frame, Valentino opens a new chapter. The campaign steps forward through attention, repetition, and the poetics of gesture. Clothing rests inside the world. Scenes unfold in silence. The result is a steady, crafted introduction, it´s an invitation to remain. Enjoy!

VALENTINO
THE POETICS OF EVERYDAY
FALL 2025 Campaign


photographer + director GLEN LUCHFORD
art director CHRISTOPHER SIMMONDS
stylist JONATHAN KAYE
set designer. GIDEON PONTE
hair PAUL HANLON
make up YADIM CARRANZA
manicure LAUREN MICHELLE PIRES
casting RACHEL CHANDLER

talents
KAI SCHREIBER
SCARLETT WHITE
AMELIA GRAY
SOPHIE THATCHER
MARIE SOPHIE WILSON
LORENZO ZURZOLO
YURI FUKUHARA
SANIQUE
YILAN HUA
AIMEE PATRICIA BYRNE
YAR AGUER
FRANKLIN SMITH
BUKWOP
LUUKAS NISKANEN
SUYONG JUNG
HANK AKERLUND


(c) VALENTINO
video music. Imaginer l’Amour — written + performed by Juliette Armanet
© ℗ 2021, Romance Musique — published by Universal Music Publishing & Armanet Songs

Valentino *Pavillon des Folies

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VALENTINO SS25
*Theatrum Mundi

written SARAH ARENDTS

Valentino SS25 moves beyond the realm of fashion, unfolding as a staged delirium where beauty performs in its purest form.

Alessandro Michele constructs a world where nothing is static, garments exist in flux, and identity bends toward theatrical excess. The collection channels movement—not as a metaphor, but as a tangible force. Fashion, in its essence, is a construction. Here, it is also a deconstruction, an invitation, a distortion.

Valentino
SS25 Campaign Pavillon des Folies

Each campaign frame is a performance, captured through Glen Luchford’s lens. Fabric rustles, lace distorts, silk drapes and clings with the inevitability of a script already written. The past lingers in embroidered surfaces, but the gesture is present, immediate. Rooms, once confined, stretch into liminal stages where models become vessels of transformation.

The cast moves through this imagined theater with the quiet tension of something unscripted. Jonathan Kaye’s styling sharpens the characters: punctuated silhouettes, lace gloved hands, the weight of a brocade, the sharp punctuation of a heel bow-tied in velvet.

The maison’s codes thread through the composition, but the script shifts. The stage is the Pavillon des Folies, a place without fixed identity, where beauty acts as a force, not an object. Alessandro Michele directs, but the narrative unfolds as an open-ended provocation.

Valentino
SS25 Campaign Pavillon des Folies