Alessandro Michele is thinking beyond the clothes we wear for Valentino Spring/Summer 2027.
Presented in Paris, the house’s latest collection is built around the idea of the “antilibary,” taking inspiration from Umberto Eco’s enormous personal library and, more specifically, the thousands of books within it that remained unread.
The concept was later explored by writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb in 'The Black Swan', where he argued that the unread section of a library can be its most valuable. Instead of representing knowledge lready acquired, those untouched books contain everything that is still unknown: ideas, stories and discoveries waiting to happen.
And for Michele, of course, there is a parallel to be found in fashion. If you look deeper, you see that every season produces garments designed for completely different lives. For example, some will eventually find their way into wardrobes, while others may only ever appear on a runway. Certain pieces will survive primarily though campaign imagery, show photography or the memories of those who saw them. Others might be bought, treasured and rarely, if ever, actually worn.
Michele proposes looking at them as part of fashion’s wider visual language. A garment doesn’t necessarily need to fulfil a practical purpose to have an impact. It can introduce a silhouette, provoke an idea or simply offer another way of imagining how the body could be dressed.
It turns the fashion show itself into what Michele describes as a kind of “visual antilibrary”: an archive filled with ideas and possibilities that don’t necessarily need to become reality to have meaning.
It’s an appropriately maximalist way of looking at fashion from a designer whose Valentino has increasingly been about building entire worlds. For SS27, the value of a garment isn’t only found in owning or wearing it... Sometimes, imaging what could be is enough.
As Michele puts forward in the collection’s accompanying text, even the clothes we never wear can offer glimpses into lives we might have lived and worlds that might never exist.
At Valentino SS27, possibility is part of the product.
