Step Inside Alessandro Michele’s Valentino Atelier Ahead of His First Couture Show

Vogue

Director: Nikki Petersen Director of Photography: Fyras Slaiman Editor: Maxime Garault Senior Producer: Bety Dereje Associate Producer: Lea Donenberg Gaffer: Darius Babled Audio: David Amsalem Production Assistant: Lorenzo Priotto Production Coordinator: Ava Kashar Production Manager: Natasha Soto-Albors Senior Director, Production Management: Jessica Schier Post Production Coordinator: Holly Frew Art &amp; Graphics Lead: Léa Kichler Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo Post Production Supervisors: Alexa Deutsch, Cyril Delvart Director, Post Production: Nicholas Ascanio Director, Content Production: Rahel Gebreyes Senior Director, Digital Video: Romy van den Broeke Senior Director, Programming: Linda Gittleson VP, Video Programming: Thespena Guatieri

Transcript

00:00I'm Alessandro, I'm 52 years old, I'm a fashion designer.

00:30So, it's a cloudy day, cold in Paris, and I'm here working for my first couture show

00:43for Valentino.

00:44It's a beginning, you know?

00:46Like every beginning, it's beautiful, it's exciting, but it's also stressful.

00:52The collection is an incredible, for me, exercise of creativity.

01:19It's been like trying to play with imagination.

01:30I was also thinking about, you know, the golden age that probably Mr. Valentino lived during

01:37the Cinecittà time, and looking at all these incredible ateliers that were doing incredible

01:45movies, Visconti and Federico Fellini, and it's like a deep dive in all this crazy world.

01:57I think that Mr. Valentino means for many people a kind of classical beauty.

02:05My way to approach beauty is more, it's more savage.

02:11I like the wrong things that became beautiful, you know?

02:16I try to be wild, to have like a strong and, in a way, different conversation with him.

02:25His presence is so big, you must find your way.

02:30How do you feel working with the shoes?

02:33Better the other?

02:34It's harder.

02:35Ah, it's harder.

02:37Work again?

02:39Belle, eh?

02:41It started from kind of a coat, a robe-manteau from Mr. Valentino.

02:47And I was thinking about the idea of the coat that is very contemporary, but it's also

02:54interesting because it's a piece of the wardrobe that came from, you know, military things.

02:59And so I started to work on that coat as an 18th century dress.

03:09We have like five ateliers, and they work just by themselves in a very also secret way

03:17that is very fascinating.

03:19I feel myself like that I'm learning because this is so different from being just a fashion

03:26designer, you know?

03:28Because there is like a ritual about this job.

03:31You need to know who do that specific thing.

03:36I never seen something like this in my life.

03:39Believe me, I think that you must really see to understand.

03:46I felt at the beginning very shy to start this work.

03:50I met many extraordinary human beings with such big passions.

03:59I've been enchanted about the way they work by hand in every single piece for hours and

04:06hours.

04:07There are people that are here from such a long, long time, you know?

04:12I'm thinking about Antonietta.

04:14She's here from 38 years.

04:17She's the master, one of the masters of the studio.

04:22Iconic.

04:23She makes these masterpieces from years and years.

04:26And she's always also perfect and, you know, so fashionable.

04:29Best hair ever.

04:34There are so many people that you can really feel that they care about what they're doing,

04:41you know?

04:42And through the clothes and through every single stitch, I think that we note like the

04:50beginning of a friendship.

04:53I respect them so much and I hope that they're going to understand, I mean, what I feel about

05:01this job.

05:04When the dress come up in the room, they cover with paper all the mannequin.

05:14There is a ritual that you must follow, you know?

05:18Every single atelier, they really work by themselves.

05:22Every time, I mean, they do things.

05:24It's like a secret.

05:34I love fashion.

05:36I love arts.

05:38I love freedom and crazy things.

05:43This is almost my way to work.

05:45Giving a sense to that, you know, mess.

06:00Hello!

06:01Good morning!

06:02How are you?

06:16It's beautiful here.

06:18I don't think this will ever happen.

06:21Do you understand?

06:24Exactly.

06:25It must touch the floor.

06:31What a nice profile.

06:34We're just trying to fix the dress, you know, the volume of the gown.

06:41I'm trying to make it like a sculpture.

06:43It's the first time that we see almost finished, you know?

06:47Yeah, but it's also beautiful because it could be also a 1950 tapestry.

06:51It could be the dress of, you know, Elizabeth I.

06:55And it could be a joke.

07:00It could be a kid that make a dress with mom's carpet, you know, in the dining room.

07:07It's wonderful.

07:10It's wonderful.

07:12I'm a bit...

07:1428.

07:16Venice was about freedom and the aristocratic, they like to change their identity.

07:25I mean, they love so much masquerade or wearing masks,

07:30because they felt free to do everything they want.

07:35It is such a powerful object.

07:39Especially now, we found a way to wear a mask going through the social media

07:45and how to change your identity and to multiply your identities.

07:51Anyway, as it will go, it works.

07:54Okay.

07:56I don't like time in general.

07:59I think that doesn't make sense to, you know, put boundaries in the idea of ages.

08:06And I was trying to investigate that kind of relation between body, dress, different faces.

08:14And yes, probably for most of the people, different ages.

08:18But doesn't exist really different ages.

08:20It exists different lives, different way to live, different experience.

08:26I like people, so I don't want to make like boundaries between human beings.

08:38I'm showing the collection in such a specific moment of our life.

08:43So many things are changing politically, culturally.

08:47I think that everybody, we need to fight showing more and more incredible expressions

08:55of creativity and imagination.

08:58I hope that people are going to leave the room stronger than before

09:02thinking that we are capable to do many things.

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