Runway Rundown: Valentino Haute Couture S/S26 Finds Beauty, Even In Loss
Thank you, Valentino. A believer in beauty, always. Alessandro Michele’s Haute Couture S/S26 collection treats that belief as something that must be earned. Beauty doesn’t perform for attention; it asks for time, to be held in a gaze a little longer. Arriving in a moment shaped by loss, the collection moves with care, reminding us that beauty, when practiced seriously, is never careless.
RELATED: Bridgerton Beauty Is Back—And It’s Softer Than Ever
Inheritance, and the Discipline of Seeing
The show arrived days after the passing of Valentino Garavani, at a time when nothing could be undone and nothing should have been. Michele moved forward anyway, aware that working inside this house means accepting both inheritance and responsibility.
Titled Specula Mundi, the collection draws from the idea of the “world as a mirror”, though not one meant to flatter. Michele isn’t interested in reflection as repetition. He uses it to question how vision is formed, how images circulate, and how attention has thinned into reflex.
To do that, he reached for an almost-forgotten device: the Kaiserpanorama. A nineteenth-century viewing machine where spectators looked alone, together, through small apertures at distant worlds.
That logic shaped the show. The space functioned like a contemporary altar, restricting access and regulating the gaze. With no visual rush, each garment appeared in sequence, allowing its details to register.
Couture as Apparition
It was in these details that different perspectives took place. Ruffs framed faces like devotional objects. Quilting suggested armor and upholstery in the same breath. Harlequin patterns surfaced beside sculptural flounces shaped like architectural fragments. Volume took up space deliberately, shifting how bodies moved through the room. Michele has spoken of garments as invasive forms, capable of changing not just posture but atmosphere.
Cinema hovered throughout, though never as technology. It appeared as mythology—Hollywood as a factory of icons, bodies elevated into secular divinity. Sound reinforced the ritual. The silhouettes felt excavated, as if uncovered from a shared visual memory and returned to flesh through couture technique.
Of course, there was red—Valentino red—used sparingly. In the wake of loss, the collection remained respectful, as if Michele genuinely held the house’s history close rather than placing it on display. Everything felt considered, everything felt done from the heart.
If the collection felt demanding, that demand was the work. The creative director wasn’t offering clarity. He was offering conditions—space, tempo, focus—under which clarity might occur. In this mirror of the world, Alessandro Michele doesn’t reflect reality back to us. He pauses it, long enough to show us that couture, at its highest register, was never meant to be skimmed. It was meant to be witnessed. Isn’t that simply what beauty asks of us?
Photos: VALENTINO
The post Runway Rundown: Valentino Haute Couture S/S26 Finds Beauty, Even In Loss first appeared on MEGA.
Runway Rundown: Valentino Haute Couture S/S26 Finds Beauty, Even In Loss
Trending Updates Central
No comments: