At Valentino’s Spring Summer 26 show, fireflies were the unexpected muse of Alessandro Michele. The show was inspired by Italian poet, writer, film director, actor and playwright Pier Paolo Pasolini, who once described the glow of fireflies as a kind of hope during dark times. He saw them as signs of life, beauty, and desire continuing to exist, even when the world was being torn apart.
Michele brought this idea into the present. In a world still shaped by conformity, distraction, and noise, he asked us to look for what remains delicate, honest, and human. "We need to disarm the eyes and reawaken the gaze," Michele wrote in the show notes. "It’s the only way to understand how the gloom of our present is actually woven with light swarms of fireflies: hints of worlds to come, traces of a beauty that resists standardisation, sensitive epiphanies able to reconnect us with the human."
Exemplifying this message was an ethereal array of soft, sheer fabrics that floated down the runway in shades of ash rose, ivory, moss, and candlelight yellow. Punctuating the palette were pops of Valentino pink, cornflower blue, rich red, and glistening silver.
Silhouettes, too, were imbued with romance and reverie. From shirting dressed up with voluminous sleeves and bows of every size, to dresses and gowns that felt designed with the dance floor in mind. Firefly motifs didn’t appear literally, but the idea of their flickering glow was ever-present: in delicate beading that caught the light as models walked, metallic threads woven through gauzy fabrics, and the lights that illuminated the runway.
Menswear was equally poetic. Wide-legged trousers and shirts in raw silk gave a sense of ease, while sheer tops and embroidered jackets added a softness not often granted to masculinity on the runway. Michele doesn’t draw lines between gendered aesthetics, but instead lets beauty speak in whichever language it chooses.
If Michele's aim was to "disarm the eyes and reawaken the gaze,” then at Valentino Spring Summer 26, that gaze was fully alive — searching, seeing, and glowing.
