But who really is this eccentric creative? And what has brought him here?
Alessandro Michele was always encouraged to take interest in art and beauty, in fact the family often spent their free time in museums. He always wore his hair long and, as a young boy, was a fan of London post-punk and the so-called New Romantic street style. These are the styles that influence his work, but not only: also theatre, cinema, everyday life, pop, so much that Michele describes himself as 'a blender who reworks everything he lives'.
He believes and affirms that clothes have no meaning outside their historical context, and that they are a way to interpret and narrate modernity and oneself. This is why epochs and cultures are mixed in Michele's collections in a kaleidoscopic result reminiscent of what Gilles Deleuze called "assemblage". He creates a universe that mixes masculinity and femininity, past and present, with a strong note of Renaissance Drama.
In January 2015, he was appointed as creative director of Gucci, the fashion house where he worked from 2002 to 2022 (Tom Ford was the one who noticed and wanted him in the team of the brand).
A month after his new assignment, he showed his first women's collection: the style was a revolution, eccentric, citationist, with a strong genderless tendency. This fashion show distinguished Gucci's new aesthetic from that moment on.
Intensely connected to the city of Rome, where he was born and raised before his exploit in the fashion system to this day.
"Rome for me is a choice. A choice that implies destiny," he said. Now, that destiny has been fulfilled: from April 2nd 2024, he is officially the new creative director of Valentino, the Roman Maison par excellence, cosmopolitan but rooted in this city in a visceral way, like him.
"Rome is the city that gave birth to me, that taught me the depth of time and the grace of beauty. I asked for refuge from this imperfect, out-of-tune and contradictory city. I asked her, because her confusion was able to accommodate the multitude that dwells within me. Because her tumult resonates with my own. I love Rome for being a hybrid, plural creature, not containable by any label. I am grateful to her because she suffers from an extraordinary dissociative identity disorder. Because her creative chaos is indispensable nourishment for my work". A deep bond that cannot be severed, a symbiosis of the soul. He also stands a few metres from the garden where his uncle gave new life to furniture. Destiny, indeed.
Another game played in the 'Kering house': the luxury group holds a 30% stake in Valentino and also owns Gucci. On the other hand, 70% of the historic Roman maison is in the hands of the Mayhoola group, whose CEO Rachid Mohamed congratulated for the choice of Michele as the new Cretive Director.
And to see how much coherent and aesthetically linked Michele is to the new Maison, where he arrived on Tuesday 2 April, one needs only take a step back into the past. That past that is living through the Maison's archives designed by Valentino Garavani himself, where there is an extreme decorativism in the collections: exoticism, romanticism, dreaminess, orientalism, precious and sophisticated details, are all elements that we find both in Valentino Garavani's historical collections and in Alessandro Michele's Gucci collections, albeit interpreted in a contemporary key between geek-core and gender-fluid.
Moreover, a common passion: art and beauty in all its forms. Therefore all that remains is to discover the new creative vision of the Roman Maison that Michele will offer, planned for the S/S 2025 collection.
Virna Facchinetti @ Modemonline
