The successor of Pierpaolo Piccioli at the Italian brand was announced today
The wait is over! This Thursday (28), Maison Valentino announced that Alessandro Michele is the new creative director of both ready-to-wear and haute couture lines, succeeding Pierpaolo Piccioli, who stepped down last week. Alessandro Michele will begin his duties at Valentino next Tuesday (2), immersing himself in the archives and codes of his new home. His debut collection is set to be presented in the Spring-Summer 2025 season, scheduled for September this year.Valentino’s official Instagram account shared the news in three posts: one announcing Michele’s arrival, and two featuring a letter signed by him, in both English and Italian. In the message, he expressed his joy at the appointment and extended gratitude to the brand’s founders, Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti, as well as to the brand’s president, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, and CEO, Jacopo Venturini, with whom he had previously collaborated at Gucci.
“It’s an incredible honour for me to be welcomed at Maison Valentino. I feel the immense joy and the huge responsibility to join a Maison de Couture that has the word ‘beauty’ carved on a collective story, made of distinctive elegance, refinement and extreme grace. […]
Today, I search for words to nominate the joy, to regard it, to really convey what I feel: the smiles that kick from the chest, the bliss of gratitude that lights up the eyes, that precious moment when necessity and beauty reach out and meet. Joy, though, is such a living thing that I’m afraid to hurt it if I dare to speak its name.
May my bow, wide open arms, speak for itself and salute in this early spring the regeneration of life and the promise of new blooming.”
The selection of Alessandro Michele as Piccioli’s successor comes as no surprise. Shortly after Piccioli’s departure from Valentino, Michele and Maria Grazia Chiuri (who shared the position with Piccioli from 2008 to 2016 before assuming her role at Dior) were the frontrunners for the position.
Alessandro Michele served as the creative director of Gucci for seven years, from 2015 to 2022.