Valentino Sets Up Shop in a 19th-Century Library, and Bets Nobody Asks About the $103 Million Loss

For his fourth ready-to-wear outing at Valentino, Alessandro Michele skipped the usual tent and set up inside the 19th-century reading room of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, one of Paris's most storied public libraries. He called the show "Antibiblioteca," and guests, including Alexander Skarsgård, Cynthia Erivo, and stylist Law Roach, arrived clutching books of their own, each one held up for the cameras like a prop in a scene nobody had quite finished writing.

The clothes leaned just as theatrical. Models worked the oak reading tables in silk corset tops done up in blue, yellow, and hot pink, paired with strapless dresses, contrasting skirts, and lace trimmed in ostrich feathers. Accessories went full baroque, with gold necklaces, giant pearl earrings, and sequined clutches doing the heavy lifting, while the men's looks paired half-buttoned double-breasted jackets with sequined shirts and baseball caps reading "Villain Teen."

The spectacle is doing a lot of covering. Michele has run Valentino since March 2024, and the house is still digging out from a €103 million loss last year on falling revenue. A library full of borrowed books and celebrity cameos makes for a great photo set, but at some point Valentino needs a chapter where the sales figures read as well as the invite list.

Source: The Associated Press

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →