Opulent Ornamentation In a Time of Tension
Review of Valentino Fall 2026 Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
Returning to Rome for his fall 2026 Interferenze (translated to interference) show, Alessandro Michele carved out a moment of stillness for his exploration of opulence on a grand, yet intimate scale. The elaborate interior of the Palazzo Bernardini (formerly known as Ferraù), was a setting that has seen its fair share of nobility, and today welcomed fashion royalty into its walls.
Taking the show away from the melee of Paris fashion week – where brands fight for attention can last mere hours if they present a show impactful enough – Michele instead returned to where Valentino is deeply rooted.
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Opulent Gestures, Empowered Beauty, Translating Tension
The button from the bust of Cardinal Pietro Valier was today’s cryptic show invitation, but it was revealed in an ‘art history report’ (which also accompanied the invitation) that in Bernini’s Baroque portraiture ‘the detail is loaded with meaning.’ In this detail the classic fastening, barely changed over time, served ‘as a point of closure and control.’ Meant as a light-hearted gesture the designer also used it to speak to the power of fashion, where the opening of a button (or two) can completely change how a dress, or shirt, is perceived from prim to provocative.
Contradictions, polarities, and tensions are the parameters Michele has used to explore his visual aesthetic for Valentino. One that is neither fixed with stability like architecture nor fluid and mutating like fabric.
This collection was a questioning of hierarchies, hierarchies that are adhered to in all aspects of life. And Michele sought to, not disrupt order, but use it as a negotiating tool to form clothes that used the body as a place to challenge and unsettle structure. Fall continued the creative directors predilection with the haute-bourgeois and a class of society who exist out of the sightlines of average everyday citizens – the ‘divergent forces [that] cohabit without neutralising one another’ that were spoken of in the extensive notes provided for the show.
Following his much-lauded spring couture outing where each look was observed through small viewing squares that were a replica of the late-19th century invention – the ‘kaiserpanorama’ – this collection felt no less void of the theatre expected from the designer. Taking each garment and using it as a vehicle to open a dialogue between ‘discipline and desire…belonging and excess’ strong-shouldered leather jackets from the 1980s, lace-trimmed skinny jeans and pleated blouses with cummerbund-style satin sashes felt like they ‘belonged’ to the people in their accessibility, while desire and excess are where Michele came alive. Flirting back and forth across the decades and the Valentino archive, Michele spoke to The Impression of a “kind of beauty that I’m trying to translate in the grandeurs of the brand, and in the beauty, the richness in a very specific poetic way.” Here the body was the baseline, as the designer spoke of women being conscious of their body’s in the 1980s (i.e. bodycon), even referencing his own mother “I remember also my mom, really after the 70s she was so in control of her body and her presence.” Pleating and draping were used throughout to emulate the idea of the goddess. Putting women at the centre of the Valentino world and empowering them to embody a true Roman aesthetic mixed with “Parisian chicness.”
Yet, in confronting the changing nature of beauty he also embraced the beauty of “feeling always uncomfortable and at the same time comfortable” as he explained post-show. Colour was used in vivid combinations that felt as if in opposition, chests were laid bare and outlined with diamante cages and lavender tights were a sheer layering trick that upended conventional rules of dressing. These clothes could comfortably inhabit another time and place. One where the art of dressing up for everyday endeavours was commonplace, but with designers across the last month looking to the eighties for inspiration Michele has found himself in good company, running ‘interference’ so he can remain free to build his vision for Valentino.
THE QUOTE
It’s about Valentino. It’s about beauty. It’s about the tension between me and the brand, the conversation between me and the brand, and the kind of a beauty that I’m trying to translate in the grandeurs of the brand in a very specific poetic way.
Alessandro Michele, Creative Director, Valentino
THE WRAP UP
Alessandro Michele continues to settle into his role at Valentino by leaning into the contradictions that define his creative language. Discipline and decadence – inspired by bourgeois excess and cinematic costume – came together in a collection that treated the female body as a vessel of empowerment.
By drawing on the visual codes of the 1980s filtered through Valentino’s Roman aesthetic, Michele demonstrated that his approach to the house will always be about tension, less interested as he in resolving contradictions than in letting them live side-by-side as he constructs his own, poetic vision of the House.
