For Fall/Winter 2025, Alessandro Michele presents Valentino's collection in a bathroom stall, highlighting its role as a paradoxical space of intimacy and community. This unconventional setting, inspired by Foucault's ideas on public and private spaces, reflects the contradictions in social existence. The collection embraces queerness, examining how bodies, particularly queer ones, face scrutiny and surveillance in today's society. Clothing becomes a means of both protection and expression, encapsulating the tension between individuality and collective identity, as models emerge from the stalls in extravagant, maximalist attire.
The set choice had little to do with the physicality of the Valentino-red tiled bathroom itself, and everything to do with its symbolism.
In an age where surveillance not only reaches bathrooms, but has stationed itself between the sinks, queer bodies are the subject of scrutiny.
Collection
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