The vertigo of excess in Alessandro Michele's first couture collection for Valentino Ancient history and future risks intertwine in Vertigineux

For his first Haute Couture collection, Valentino's new artistic director, Alessandro Michele, decided to push beyond the limits. Vertigineux, the name of the show, embodies the feeling represented by the runway held at the Palais Brongniart in Paris. The invitation, a handcrafted soap—white but with the pungent scent of Saponificio Varesino—foreshadowed the intensity of the spectacle, while the set was anything but ancient: on a deep, dark stage, models walked in front of a massive digital panel displaying an endless list of adjectives, names, and objects that inspired the looks, including arsenic, Pulcinella, Marie Antoinette, bourgeoisie, Orientalism, and occultism. The show notes were just as striking, drawing from Vertigo of Lists by Umberto Eco to "summarize"—in two hundred pages—a collection bursting with details and references, spanning from 18th-century French history to Roman cinema, from cultural influences of countries far from Paris to poetic elements of the designer’s personal life. The plurality of Valentino’s Couture SS25 collection was vast—too vast—for an audience with a short attention span. Nonetheless, Michele chose to bring it all to the runway.

In short, this collection showcased the immense talent of Valentino’s design studio, which, through long hours of meticulous work, produced forty-eight Haute Couture looks, ready to be chosen for a red carpet or another high-profile appearance. With his debut in fashion’s most expensive form, Michele was able to reclaim his explosive creative flair that we had known years ago. The jewelry, masks, and ornate accessories in silver—dangling from the models' eyes and wrists like lavish shields—are back. So is the designer’s risky tendency to draw inspiration from cultures that do not belong to him. In short, Alessandro Michele is back, and he wants to shout it to the entire industry. Now, we can only wait and see whether the infinite images he sought to evoke will captivate the maison’s clients—or, as the title suggests, leave them with nothing but an overwhelming sense of vertigo and suffocation.