Inside Valentino’s Spring/Summer 2026 Haute Couture Show

The Valentino Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2026 show marks a particularly significant moment for the Roman fashion house. It is Alessandro Michele’s second couture collection for Valentino, but also the first presented after the recent passing of Valentino Garavani, the founder and cornerstone of Italian haute couture. As is his custom, Michele described his creations with a letter that serves as a key to understanding the entire project, not a discourse of formal continuity, but a reflection on legacy as a temporary responsibility, an act of stewardship rather than appropriation.
„Every creative act is also an act of custody,“ writes Michele, defining couture not as a territory to be occupied but as a space already inhabited, full of traces and gestures. It’s a clear positioning, rejecting the idea of ​​substitution or transcendence. Valentino, in his vision, is not a closed chapter but a mythological presence, an ordering principle that continues to operate in the present. Myth, Michele reminds us, doesn’t belong to the past; it inaugurates a language, making a space of meaning habitable. And it is within this space that the collection takes shape.

Valentino Specula Mundi Spring/Summer 2026 Haute Couture Collection

The Haute Couture show opens with Valentino Garavani’s words from the film „The Last Emperor,“ a reference to cinema and stars that immediately introduces a dimension of memory and shared imagination. Not nostalgia, but an awareness of the Maison’s symbolic weight. The venue reinforces this conceptual framework: a series of ephemeral circular constructions—similar to late 19th-century Kaiserpanoramas—are arranged alphabetically, with small square windows through which spectators observe the looks in an almost voyeuristic manner. This device forces viewers to observe in fragments, as if couture were something that can never be fully experienced, but requires attention, effort, and time.

On the catwalk, the collection explicitly moves in the territory of grandeur and of declared wonder. Alessandro Michele’s aesthetic and maximalist lexicon emerge from the looks, which evoke the idea of ​​movie stars, not so much as characters but as stage presences. Marabou feathers, impalpable capes, feather crowns, and imposing ruffs create a theatricality that isn’t afraid of excess, but controls it with extreme artisanal precision. Gigot sleeves puff out decisively, flounced dresses take center stage, encrusted overcoats, and delicate embroidery speak of hours of invisible labor.

Here, couture returns to what Michele describes in his letter: a living practice, sustained by a community of hands and knowledge. Premières, seamstresses, embroiderers, and pattern makers are not a silent backdrop, but the very structure upon which the creative gesture rests. The collection seems constructed to make visible this genealogy of transmission, in which legacy is not a form to be preserved, but a knowledge that is renewed only through use.

It’s not a couture designed to reassure. Nor to explicitly commemorate a legacy. Rather, it’s a collection that accepts the void left by Valentino Garavani ‚s absence without attempting to fill it. „Not to fill an absence, but to preserve it,“ Michele writes. It’s a statement that finds a coherent translation on the catwalk: beauty as responsibility, magnificence as discipline.

Watch the video of Valentino's Spring Summer 2026 Haute Couture fashion show

Celebrities at Valentino’s Haute Couture show

The Valentino couture front row reflected the Maison’s cross-generational, cross-disciplinary reach, bringing together cinema, music, and performance. Dakota Johnson and Kirsten Dunst represented Valentino’s enduring bond with Hollywood, while Marisa Berenson added a sense of fashion and film history. Music spanned generations and geographies, with Lily Allen, Tyla, Jessie Murph, Faouzia, and Asian pop icon Jolin Tsai in attendance, alongside Thai actress Freen Sarocha. K-pop was represented by IVE members Rei and Liz, underscoring luxury’s ongoing dialogue with global pop culture. Sir Elton John and David Furnish added legendary star power, while Guillaume Diop and a slate of European actresses—including Isabella Ferrari, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Hande Erçel, and Ginevra Elkann—rounded out a front row that felt less like a guest list and more like a portrait of Valentino’s cultural universe.