Alessandro Michele’s Valentino Couture Is Straight Out of a Hollywood Archive

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If there’s one thing Valentino designer Alessandro Michele loves, it’s a Golden Age Hollywood reference. And this season, his couture collection for Valentino was full of them, particularly the work of Art Deco design icon Erté, whose influence could be seen everywhere from gowns to robes to fanciful headdresses. The collection was, as ever, a feast for the eyes, full of glitz and glamour and the kind of face framing collars that seem made for black and white closeups shot on real film.

The show itself incorporated a dramatic set piece modeled on a Kaiserpanorama — a machine designed for the public viewing of stereoscopic images that predates the cinema — that felt like a sort of time machine or relic, but rendered in an almost disturbingly reduced and modern way, with spectators heads isolated in their own little boxes around the perifery. It feels almost like the set of some long-forgotten sci-fi B movie: all clean lines and anachronistic costumes.

It was cool, though. Still modern. Minus some of the more costume-y flourishes. Or maybe even with them. After all, in the age of “method dressing” celebrity stylists are constantly on the hunt for looks that mirror the costumes and themes of the films their clients are trying to promote. And, depending on the film — a period piece, obviously — Michele would seem to have them covered. And if anyone reading this is thinking of remaking Ziegfeld Girl – the film that made the late Valentino Garavani want to become a designer in the first place — let this collection serve as proof that you should do everything you can to secure Michele to design the costumes.

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