Alessandro Michele is set to be Valentino's new creative director
The official announcement has arrived: the former creative director of Gucci, Alessandro Michele, is the new creative director of Valentino.
"Not all stories have a beginning and an end, some live a kind of eternal present that shines with an intense light, so strong that it leaves no shadows". This is the excerpt from Pierpaolo Piccioli departure notes, when he announced his farewell to Valentino.
And after less than 10 days, the official announcement regarding his successor arrived: Alessandro Michele will be the new creative director of Valentino. Together with the press release issued by the Maison, the first words from Alessandro Michele were "It's an incredible honour. I feel the immense joy and enormous responsibility of becoming part of a Maison de Couture that has the word 'beauty' engraved on a collective history made of distinctive elegance, refinement and extreme grace."
Alessandro Michele: Who is Valentino's new creative director?
At the end of the 1990s, Alessandro made his first big break when he joined Fendi, collaborating with Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi. In 2002 he was recruited by Tom Ford, then creative director of Gucci, where he initially worked on accessories. From there, he became senior designer in 2006 and associate director in 2011, where he worked with the creative director Frida Giannini until 2015.
In January 2015, Marco Bizzarri, who had recently become CEO of Gucci, offered Alessandro Michele the role of creative director in place of Frida Giannini, giving the designer a week to prepare the show of his first men's collection.
A month later, he debuted his first women's collection for Gucci, characterized by a revolutionary and eccentric style, with a strong inclination towards genderless aesthetics, which defined the new era of Gucci. In 2019, he also launched Gucci Beauty and the brand's first high jewellery line.
On 24th November 2022, his departure from Gucci was announced.
When is Alessandro Michele's first collection for Valentino?
Valentino had recently announced that it will not be presenting for the coming menswear and haute couture show in June 2024. Therefore, as the new creative director, Alessandro Michele will make his debut for Valentino in the coming September shows, presenting Valentino's Spring/Summer 2025 ready-to-wear collection during Paris Fashion Week.
The statement from Rachid Mohamed Rachid, Chairman Valentino
“I am very happy and excited to return to work with Alessandro Michele after years of working together. His talent, creativity, and profound intelligence, always linked to a wonderful lightness, will write another chapter of Maison Valentino.
I am certain that the reinterpretation of Maison's couture codes and the heritage created by Mr. Valentino Garavani, combined with Alessandro’s extraordinary vision, will bring us moments of great emotion and will translate into irresistibly desirable objects.”
Alessandro Michel on his new role with Valentino:
“It’s an incredible honour for me to be welcomed at Maison Valentino. I feel the immense joy and the huge responsibility to join a Maison de Couture that has the word beauty ’ carved on a collective story, made of distinctive elegance, refinement and extreme grace.
My first thought goes to this story: to the richness of its cultural and symbolic heritage, to the sense of wonder it constantly generates, to the very precious identity given with their wildest love by founding fathers, Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti. These references always represented an essential source of inspiration for me, and I’m going to praise such influence through my own interpretation and creative vision.
My heartfelt gratitude, of course, goes to Rachid Mohamed Rachid who gave me this unique and irreplicable occasion. His trust is a gift of the soul that I will try to cherish with my work and total devotion.
My thankfulness to Jacopo Venturini is boundless, limitless. Getting back to work with him is a marvellous dream come true. Jacopo is not only an extraordinary professional, able to combine pragmatism and strategic vision, competence and sensibility. He’s most of all a man who is able to celebrate falling in love with life every day, through his passions and his care.
Today, I search for words to nominate the joy, to regard it, to really convey what I feel: the smiles that kick from the chest, the bliss of gratitude that lights up the eyes, that precious moment when necessity and beauty reach out and meet. Joy, though, is such a living thing that I’m afraid to hurt it if I dare to speak its name.
May my bow, wide open arms, speak for itself and salute in this early spring the regeneration of life and the promise of new blooming.”
