“It's been a while!” said Alessandro Michele with a chuckle on Sunday afternoon in Paris. The designer was holding a press conference following his Valentino debut, which marked the ex-Gucci maestro's eagerly anticipated return to fashion and his first runway show in two years. Perched on an antique armchair blanketed by a dust cover, legs crossed, it was hard to miss the symbolism.
Michele looked like a king returned to his throne, albeit one with staunchly modern values: his long chestnut locks crowned by a grey ballcap embroidered with the phrase “Techno Is My Boyfriend.” About an hour earlier, on the outskirts of Paris, we entered the same subterranean theatre where Michele sat to find a cabinet of curiosities draped in the same dust covers: wooden chairs and brass lamps and even a grand piano forming the ghostly set. (My ticket led me to a time-worn loveseat with – as I discovered underneath the sheet – sumptuous velvet upholstery.
) It was, it seemed, the symbolic dormant palace Michele unlocked when he arrived at the Roman couture house in April. “It was really beautiful,” he said. “It was a home, a home full of precious things, fragile objects, difficult to approach but also full of life.
” The floor, an acre of cracked mirror laid down by Italian contemporary artist Alfredo Pirri, gently crunched under Hari Nef's heels. “We're so fucking back,” said the actress. Nef was part of Michele's artsy Gucci gang that repped his baroque-punk sensibility .