Valentino Garavani died a week and a half ago in Rome at the age of 93. To honor him, the Valentino show began with a clip from Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor. In it, the designer, on the eve of retirement in 2008, remembers how he fell in love with magazines, cinema, and fashion. “I was dreaming about movie stars, about everything beautiful in the world. My mom said, ‘you are a dreamer, you always dream, dream, dream, dream’.” It could’ve been Alessandro Michele talking.
Anyone who’s watched his career since Gucci knows that Michele has a similar fixation. It was impossible not to recall a 2021 Gucci show on Hollywood Boulevard; only there the models strutted down the Walk of Fame, and here at Valentino, in what was quite possibly a fashion show first, they emerged one-by-one in a series of circular “kaiserpanorama” set up at the Tennis Club de Paris, the audience peeping them through little squares built into the walls.
The kaiserpanorama dates to 1890, a form of stereoscopic entertainment that predated film. The effect here, once we got comfortable with our roles as voyeurs, was transfixing, the square windows and the spare, neon-white walls sharpening the focus, and the rooms dimming as one model left and another appeared, finding her light. The models had been urged to vamp it up and they obliged; in these photos you see faces in the boxes, but as it was happening, it was iPhone cameras, each of us getting the shot. Michele has a director’s eye for scenography and spectacle, but it’s costume design that he originally wanted to pursue, and in this collection he indulged his most expressive instincts. The higher the feather headdress, the closer to God.
Because of the set-up of the show, each kaiserpanorama had a different look first. Some saw a trapunto stitched skirt suit in what looked like a 1940s vintage in mauvy pink; others a draped black silk velvet dress with a direct line back to the 1910s and Paul Poiret, the subject of a recent Paris exhibition and also an influence on Jonathan Anderson’s collection for Dior Men; still more saw a creamy satin slip dress and an embroidered ivory cape fit for Greta Garbo as Mata Hari. Where Vogue was seated, it was a caftan with flames of gold sequins licking the neckline and sleeves, topped by, bien sur, an elaborate feather headdress. Katharine Hepburn’s black and white striped Bringing Up Baby gown got a re-airing too.
Michele decade-hopped with freedom, under no duress to design to a theme, like he might be at a ready-to-wear show destined for stores. What held the collection together was his showmanship and his roving eye for beauty and drama. When all the models cycled through all the kaiserpanorama they reappeared for a final walk down the runway. The first dress was draped in 1980s fashion, plunging to a knot at the navel with full, batwing sleeves. Naturally, it was Valentino red.
