Alessandro Michele has embraced a more maximalist vision at Valentino as quiet luxury wanes with Valentino's Spring/Summer 2027 collection, trading polished restraint for sheer fabrics, corsets, chunky jewellery and deliberately imperfect styling. The designer presented the collection on 4 October 2026 during Paris Fashion Week, continuing his push to reshape the Italian fashion house through a more maximalist vision of glamour.
Staged inside Paris' Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, the show placed Michele's unruly take on glamour against one of the city's most formal and historic settings. Titled Antibiblioteca: Catalogue of the Unread, the presentation also invited guests to bring books, 'BRING A BOOK', creating a contrast between the library's atmosphere of order and the collection's deliberately undone clothes.
Valentino Screams 'More' at Paris Fashion Week
Michele, who joined Valentino after his seven-year tenure at Gucci, has been using the house to explore the tension between its established codes and his more maximalist approach. At the Paris show, that tension became especially visible through clothes designed to look glamorous without appearing perfectly polished.
The collection featured see-through gauzy fabrics, lace, corset tops, chunky gold jewellery and pieces styled with an intentionally undone quality.
Menswear followed the same approach, with creased trousers, silky boxer-style pieces visible above waistbands and double-breasted blazers worn with buttons deliberately misaligned.
A Deliberately 'Wrong' Kind of Glamour
Rather than presenting glamour as something precise and carefully controlled, Michele appeared more interested in what happens when conventional fashion rules are disrupted.
Michele described his style as a play of the 'idea of glamour in the wrong way', according to The Guardian. The result was a collection that embraced imperfections instead of attempting to conceal them.
The clothes often appeared intentionally imperfect, from mismatched details to styling that suggested something had been thrown together rather than meticulously arranged.
Inside the 'Antibiblioteca'
The setting added another layer to the collection. Guests arrived carrying books, following an invitation from Michele to bring a new book or one from their own collection, intended for donation to libraries.
The contrast between the library and the clothes was striking. Inside a space associated with knowledge, order and quiet concentration, Michele sent out looks that embraced excess, exposed skin and deliberate disorder.
The unusual setting reinforced the idea behind the collection: fashion does not always have to follow an established formula to be considered beautiful. It echoed the collection's central exploration of books, possibility and the relationship between the worn and the unread.
Michele Pushes Valentino to Imperfect Glamour
The collection continues Michele's interest in challenging the idea of what Valentino should look like. His previous Fall/Winter 2026 collection, Interference, similarly explored tension and disruption, with the designer positioning himself as an 'interference' in the aesthetic structure established by Valentino founder Valentino Garavani.
For Spring/Summer 2027, however, the message was less about preserving perfection and more about allowing fashion to become messy, sensual and unpredictable.
Michele's Valentino is therefore moving further away from the discreet luxury that has dominated fashion conversations in recent years. Instead, he is making a case for glamour with imperfections —clothes that look as though they belong on a dancefloor rather than in a carefully controlled wardrobe.
At Valentino, polished restraint may be having its moment, but Michele seems more interested in getting things slightly 'wrong'.
