Valentino. Fall/Winter 2026, 2027 - Milan (Paris Fashion Week)

(Images: Valentino 2026)

How do we define a glitch within the concept of timeline?  And the late Valentino Garavani, who passed away January 2026 at the age of 93, once professed that he "hated the 1980s fashion", including his own collections, claiming that he's aesthetical inspiration started in the 1940s and ended in the 1960s.  And he may, or may not have liked the 1990s, be it fashion's ebbs and flows, and throughout the 2000s, as the industry became more cologomenetre orintated.   We have since seen fashion nestle into its current modernist template, without much room to experiment with, albeit some of the last of the independent designers still standing, offering a slight buffer between expectations of market share, and the creation of innovating looks.   

And Alessandro Michele would have to be that quintessential fashion designer, who was able to wedge his own definition of uniqueness within the corporatized fashion world, despite being asked to leave Gucci in 2025, he has since reinvigorated his eccentricity with Valentino.  Decreeing that his 2nd runway show for the iconic Italian fashion house, held in Rome, was indeed a glitch, or "interference" as Michele explained, by adding a "crooked" look to Valentino, which would have been, as noted, an aberration to the late Valentino Garavani.  Even more aversive was Michele's extreme 1980s shoulder pads seen on some of the avant-garde esque 80s jackets, blouses and one piece dresses, to which Garavani would have been appalled.   Is this Michele's way of clearing out the spirit of Valentino Garavani?

Maybe it is, and Michele's quickly avant-garde, mixed with Valentino's gracing of 1980s hedonism, even though he later disliked it, did reflect the "PoMo" (postmodern) gentrification of New York in the late 80s, and despite the 2nd wave of gentrification, which began in the 1990s, with glass and steel with its modernist  functionality, should be viewed as a prefabricated illusion.  In other words, it's doesn't work, in comparison to the PoMo 1st wave.  So, I'll take post-counter culture, hedonic kitsch anyday over the current corporatism arrays, which Michele's Fall 2026 rejects. 

Lace, with its sexual allure and Michele's Interferenze ("interference") merge, under the epicurean of a tryst.  Seductive, mythical and powerful flows, with its layered styles, Michele is drawing more excess to his quirkiness, rather than belated sensenabities.  Maybe a clue, that a liberating revolution could be on the horizon, or be it, a mirage.  Yet, the question remains:  can we all within our psyche, tap its aesthetical openness for change?

A stunning collection from Alessandro Michele.

____

(A.Glass 2026)