Rome matters to Valentino in more ways than postcards and pasta. Valentino Garavani planted roots here back in 1960 with his first boutique, while Alessandro Michele never really left, born and bred, he’s basically Roman DNA. The city, with all its baroque excess and built-in gravitas, does half the work for you anyway. You don’t pick a place like this, unless you want the clothes to argue a bit with it.
“Palazzo Barberini is not an architecture at peace… The building resists any synthesis between order and movement: it lays bare their forced coexistence, their permanent friction, the interferences produced as they overlap,” the press release read, and you could almost hear the architects, Maderno, Bernini, and Borromini exchanging smirks across centuries. In other words, the palace is the inspiration for the clothes, neatly summed up by its name, Interferenze, whether seen or felt. Beauty and power here don’t come from perfect harmony, they come from the forced collision, the friction, and the constant argument between opposites.
The result is a collection that doesn’t melt inside the palace, it feeds from its tension. Structured tailoring bumps into draping, textures push against curves, and every look seems aware of the building’s own contradictions. The show opened with cinched waists, right from the first look, a fur coat, a piece of fabric hugged the waist and tied into a bow, already playing with shape and control. Patterns, embroidery, lace, assymmetry, leather manipulation, in-your-face jewelery, and clashing colors were all part of what Valentino looks like outside of Paris. “I let the color go, because it has a presence. Red is very difficult to handle…. Here it is a sign that gives you chills when you see it,” Michele told Vogue after a relaxed, bold-shouldered red gown closed the runway. Step outside if you must, but the clothes stick with you longer than the carved ceilings.
