The richness of contradiction in Valentino's FW26 show Alessandro Michele, the philosophy of the Baroque, and the 1980s

It was a more disciplined Alessandro Michele who signed, yesterday, the Valentino FW26 collection presented at Palazzo Barberini. Perhaps it was the solemnity of the place, Palazzo Barberini; perhaps it was the sense of importance given to the historical moment by the recent passing of the founder Valentino Garavani; perhaps a closer understanding that Michele must have felt with the brand he directs. The fact is that the Interferenze show managed to demonstrate a further rapprochement between Michele's personal aesthetic and that of Valentino. The result was strong, more compact, with a more precise signature. And, as usual, the concept of the show was almost more interesting than the show itself.

The interferences of the title are those that dominate the architecture of Palazzo Barberini, where the show was set. The palace indeed contains within its rational and harmonious structure all the splendor of the Baroque era, a time when the pursuit of artifice and wonder, the drive to find the furthest point art could reach, led to creating perspective illusions, simulations of nature, and over-the-top architectural rhythms that contradict the apparent classical layout of the palace, which is thus a «field of interferences» where opposing tensions coexist.

According to Michele, fashion does the same: it is both a language of social conformity and of personal expression, a creative discipline where the recognizable and the original must coexist. «Like architecture, fashion too stabilizes and destabilizes, orients and decenters, affirms and puts into crisis», Michele writes in his notes. «The construction of a garment, like that of a building, is always the provisional outcome of a negotiation between code and invention, between memory and mutation. Every creative gesture measures itself against a tradition that precedes it, and it is precisely in this confrontation that it finds the possibility of a slippage capable of putting a pre-established normative structure into crisis».

And so the palace and the collection find themselves in a kind of symbolic interdependence that «makes visible the constitutive friction between rigor and transgression that runs through both architecture and dressing». The grassy lawn that served as the surreal runway for the show, for example, found a counterpart in the famous fresco Triumph of Divine Providence by Pietro da Cortona that “transforms” the vault of the hall into an open sky populated by flying figures: it is nature bursting into architecture, creating the sense of something that surpasses reality, the thrill of art.

Amid all these trompe-l’œil figures and architectures, however, the Barberini coat of arms dominates, similar to the logo of a modern company. In this sense, to the writer, another parallel also came to mind: namely that all the beauty and luxury on display both in the palace and in the collection seem different only from a historical perspective but in reality represent the same type of branded excellence that signals a hierarchy of power. The Divine Providence that triumphs in the fresco, after all, is what made Maffeo Barberini a pope: the Barberini dynasty self-promotes with its own logo exactly as a modern company does today with its installations and also with its fashion shows.

As for the collection, however, it can be said that despite the many self-citations by Michele to himself (especially in the lace dresses, both with mega woman with dropped waist and with fur), the designer managed to negotiate a more solid balance between his often overly eccentric taste and the composure and grace typical of Valentino. There were fewer frills, all the kitsch was eliminated, and even the menswear shifted effectively toward greater wearability without giving up Michele's classic aesthetic flair.

The internal tension in Palazzo Barberini and in fashion, between rigor and madness, artifice and nature, harmony and the unexpected, seems to come from an autobiographical cue. It seems, that is, that Michele's notes should be read figuratively: the tension between Baroque movement and classical architecture is that between him and Valentino's “house,” the field of interferences is actually the collection where the opposing impulses between his own codes and those of the brand must coexist. Michele's thesis is that the vitality of the brand derives precisely from these unresolved tensions and is the result of this negotiation. It is a process still ongoing, as Michele continues to reflect on it, but perhaps the point of his fashion is precisely this: to explore connections, possible recombinations, and infinite allegories.