MILAN – Valentino has confirmed the arrival of Alessandro Michele as inventive director of the Rome-based couture home. He succeeds Pierpaolo Piccioli, who exited the model on Friday after 25 years. Michele left his function as inventive director of Gucci in November 2022.
On Friday, WWD was the primary to report that Piccioli was exiting the Rome-based couture home based mostly on data from market sources, who additionally believed that Michele was negotiating his contract to develop into his successor.
MIchele begins Tuesday, in response to an inside assertion. His first assortment will likely be for spring 2025.
Michele joined the Gucci design studio in 2002 following a stint as senior equipment designer at Fendi. He was appointed “affiliate” to then-creative director Frida Giannini in 2011, and in 2014 took on the extra accountability of inventive director of Richard Ginori, the porcelain model acquired by Gucci in 2013. Michele was formally appointed to Gucci’s prime inventive function in January 2015, two days after he first took a bow on the finish of the model’s males’s fall 2015 present, promoted by then-chairman and chief govt officer Marco Bizzarri.
With that seminal present he reinvented Gucci with a totally new, quirky and androgynous aesthetic.
Piccioli’s final fall 2024 all-black assortment proven throughout Paris Vogue Week was his swansong for the model. On Monday, Valentino stated it was sitting out menswear and couture weeks in June, typically proven in Paris.
Piccioli was named sole inventive director of Valentino in July 2016, following the departure of Chiuri to affix Dior.
Chiuri and Piccioli first labored collectively at Fendi for 10 years. In 1999, Valentino Garavani chosen the designers to spice up his model’s equipment class, which they did, rejuvenating that division. They have been promoted to inventive administrators of equipment at Valentino when Alessandra Facchinetti was assigned the identical title for rtw after Garavani retired in 2007. In 2008, they succeeded Facchinetti as inventive administrators of the model.
In July of final yr, Kering revealed it purchased a 30 % stake in Valentino for 1.7 billion euros in money as a part of a broader strategic partnership with Qatari funding fund Mayhoola, which controls the couture model.
Kering has an possibility to purchase one hundred pc of Valentino’s capital by 2028, whereas Mayhoola might develop into a shareholder in Kering. The brand new luxurious companions are anticipated to collectively discover additional alternatives aligned with their respective methods, together with potential investments past trend.