There was never much doubt that Alessandro Michele – one of fashion’s biggest personalities and a man with a passion for capes, hats, pearls, pleats, bows, ruffs, lace and embroidery – would take to the world of haute couture like a duck to water. Michele became a star designer during his time at Gucci , but a new job at the house of Valentino has given him a shot at haute couture, the Champions League elite of fashion, where each dress is made to order with hundreds of hours of work, all done by hand. The old Paris stock exchange was plunged into shadow and Prokofiev’s foreboding Romeo and Juliet ballet theme, Dance of the Knights, boomed into the darkness.
Seating was banked claustrophobically tight and dizzyingly high. A flame-haired model – in a harlequinned and crinolined, chiffon-sleeved ballgown that took the atelier 1,300 hours to create – took a silent glide across the stage, like the queen in a giant chess game. A guipure lace gown with a hood that was half-balaclava, half-carnival mask was followed by a scalloped and feathered silver gown under an ivory pleat cape secured with a flourish of duck egg chiffon.
Behind the clothes, a stream-of-consciousness download of Michele’s thought process ticker-taped along a screen: Emily Dickinson, Umberto Eco, synth pop, Marie Antoinette, Gustav Klimt, botanical art, Beverly Hills. “I am passionate about lists,” Michele said after the show. “About trying to find order.
My work is to imagine. My job is like .
