Alessandro Michele
He becomes creative director of Valentino
Alessandro Michele becomes the new creative director at Valentino.
© Steve Vas / Featureflash 2015/ImageCollect
14 months after leaving Gucci, Alessandro Michele has found a new home: he becomes creative director at Valentino.
All roads lead to Rome: the former Gucci designer Alessandro Michele (51) has found his new fashionable home at Valentino. After Pierpaolo Piccioli (56) left the company after 25 years, the Italian fashion house appointed him as its new creative director.
This ends months of speculation about the former Gucci creative director’s next stop. He resigned from office in November 2022 after five years. Now he’s looking forward to what’s to come: “It’s an incredible honor,” writes Michele on Instagram. “I feel great joy and great responsibility to join a couture house that has engraved the word ‘beauty’ in a collective history of distinctive elegance, sophistication and extreme grace.”
His first day of work is April 2, 2024. And in what is probably one of the most beautiful offices in the fashion industry: Valentino’s studio is located in the Palazzo Mignanelli, just a few steps away from the Spanish Steps in Rome. His first collection is the one for spring/summer 2025, which will be presented as part of Paris Fashion Week in September.
Meteoric rise
Alessandro Michele has had a meteoric rise in the fashion world: The Rome-born designer began his career in 1994 at an Italian knitting company in Bologna. Three years later he joined the fashion house Fendi under Karl Lagerfeld (1933-2019).
His career at Gucci began in 2002 when Michele was hired by Tom Ford (62) in the brand’s London office. There he was initially responsible for leather goods. From 2011 he worked as deputy under creative director Frida Giannini (52), whose role he took on in 2015. With Michele as creative director, the company was able to almost triple its annual sales from 3.5 billion euros in 2014 to 9.73 billion euros in 2022.