Federico Fellini, the renowned director, and his 1972 film “Roma” served as the inspiration for the video that the designer created to go with the brand’s “Avant les Débuts” resort 2025 pictures.
MILAN – With the debut of his first Valentino advertising campaign, Alessandro Michele is letting another window into his creative realm as he promotes the June-unveiled “Avant les Débuts” resort 2025 collection. Federico Fellini, the renowned director, was the person he turned to achieve this goal.
“I wanted to go back to a language that would echo the magic realism of Federico Fellini, the visual symbolism of Ingmar Bergman, and the neorealism of Luchino Visconti starting this new phase,” Michele said in an exclusive interview. The voice of Fellini from his 1972 film “Roma” is heard in the campaign video created by the designer in collaboration with Glen Luchford.
In the film, Fellini described Rome and all of its contrasts while following actress Anna Magnani as she made her way home to Palazzo Altieri with his camera.
“I play with the transposition of space and time, pretending to follow a girl in my new home, Palazzo Mignanelli [Valentino’s headquarters in Rome],” Michele remarked.
“The symbol of the city: Rome, seen both as a she-wolf and a vestal, aristocratic and ragged, gloomy and clownish,” was how Fellini praised Magnani. “Federico Fellini could not have been more accurate, given Rome’s precise paradoxical nature,” Michele continued.
The campaign’s film and photos were intended, according to the designer, “to have a patina as if they dated back to Valentino Garavani’s heyday.”
He pointed out that the photographs in the printed layout actually resemble Polaroids. “I wanted them to be smaller in size, which would lead to a precise choice to look at them,” the designer said. “We are so used to scrolling images that we are nearly overwhelmed by them.”
Michele imagined a cast of “eccentric, uninhibited and eclectic” characters within the palazzo, “celebrating the art of the feast,” including a cardinal skating across the salons, heiresses of a decaying nobility, and several pugs, an obvious nod to the couturier’s favourite canines.
“It’s a party, a blend of various layers that represent the city of Rome, aristocratic, eccentric, private, sacred, and secular,” Michele remarked.
The designer expressed his desire to collaborate with Luchford once more. The two had worked together on multiple Gucci campaigns, which featured Harry Styles posing with animals like chickens and dogs in a northern London fish and chips shop or drawing inspiration from science fiction from the 1950s and 1960s, such as the TV show “Star Trek.”
Glen is a buddy, and I collaborate with people that I value personally. Additionally, I will confess that I hope to use film as a medium that suits me. Glen and I have created a unique, incredibly cinematic look,” Michele stated. “The film’s grandiose yet understated images illuminate Valentino’s home.”
On September 30, the “Avant les Débuts” collection had its debut at the Valentino Paris locations on Saint-Honoré and Avenue Montaigne. On October 15, the collection will be available in stores worldwide.
Rome continues to occupy Michele’s thoughts, as it has in the past. He finds it fascinating because of its contradictions, exquisite art and architecture, anarchy, and rough edges, all of which he acknowledges add to the city’s allure.
That being said, the designer was positive about his time in the French metropolis when he spoke a few days after his inaugural exhibition on September 29.
“I’m in love with Paris. Michele stated, “Valentine [Garavani] was the first Italian to be admitted to the court of couturiers and he built a bridge between Paris and Rome.” “In any case, Paris and Rome share so much,” he stated, giving the example of Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino, an Italian statesman and cardinal who succeeded Richelieu as France’s prime minister in the 17th century. “Valentino has two equally significant and highly regarded headquarters, one in Paris and one in Rome.”
He seemed upbeat and described the spring 2025 show as “cathartic.” Expressing his appreciation and respect for Garavani, he said he “did an archeological work with the collection, to rebuild with my own eyes and my own vision that world, but this is me. I don’t copy and paste; I think [Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti] recognised certain archive items that they examined and reworked. In actuality, our relationship with each new home we live in will always include reinvention rather than merely reflection on the past.
He called the spring collection “an antidote against transience” and praised Garavani for “being brave in saying that fashion is not futile” and for “extraordinary how much [he] loved life, there was no remorse towards lightness and beauty, using beauty as a medicine.”
A number of his ardent admirers, including Elton John and Jared Leto, attended the spring performance. When asked whether he had ever planned the thoughts of such well-known acquaintances, he gave the subject some thought before answering, “No, but I do observe people around me and am influenced by them.”
He continued, “I think Valentino had many close friends,” in reference to friends. Although I don’t consider myself to be a member of the jet set and I don’t compare myself to him, that lifestyle is no longer the norm. The world has opened up and blended, and he made clothing for the life he knew. It was all genuine and not just a brand.
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