Alessandro Michele has a talent for making the establishment look slightly dangerous. His Resort 2027 collection for Valentino, reviewed by WWD as Villain Teens at the Villa, takes the house’s aristocratic codes and twists them into something that feels less like inheritance and more like heist.
Michele’s grasp of fabric continues to deepen. A double-faced cashmere coat in dove gray drapes with the weight of custom tailoring, while a silk georgette dress in violet floats away from the body. The hand of each material is given room to speak, even when the silhouette is deliberately subversive.
The Resort season occupies a unique position in the luxury calendar. It is the collection that sits in stores longest, often from November through April, and it must work harder commercially than the runway collections. Michele’s offering manages the trick of being both wearable and provocative, a combination that retailers have responded to with enthusiasm.
What makes the collection cohere is not its individual pieces but its attitude. Michele has tapped into a specific cultural moment where luxury consumers want to signal both taste and irreverence. The Villain Teens aesthetic allows them to do both, without having to choose.
