Fans have finally waited for Alessandro Michele’s first haute couture show! The Valentino Spring/Summer 2025 haute couture extravaganza is themed “Vertigineux,” leaving everyone curious about what tricks this profoundly subversive designer will showcase.
“Vertigineux dizziness” originates from Umberto Eco’s discussions on “lists” in “The Infinite Database”. He posits that “lists are the root of culture; they do not destroy culture but create it.” Eco’s concept of lists attempts to contain infinite things within a meaningful framework, establishing order within a chaotic universe. This contradictory sensation gives rise to what is known as “list dizziness.”
In today’s world where AI is becoming increasingly prevalent, Alessandro Michele chooses to go against the grain, embracing history in the Valentino 2025 Spring/Summer haute couture collection. Through the French term “Vertigineux,” which translates to dizziness or vertigo, he delves into the dazzling “history.” The love for lists and the habit of cataloging things, people, and phenomena have always been intertwined with human history. Though the rhetorical device of listing may seem simple, scholars rarely delve into its narrative and poetic potential. Unlike others, Umberto Eco deserves recognition for his unique interpretation of lists, bringing this subject to the forefront of contemporary academic discourse and meticulously collecting and analyzing numerous examples covering art and literature: from Homer to Joyce, from Ezekiel to Garcia, and further to Arcimboldo, Calvino, and Morro.
According to this Italian semiotician, every list exists between two opposing yet complementary trends. On one hand, it seeks to limit the infinite expansion of existing things within a meaningful framework. This is a method of establishing order amid the chaos of the universe. This form of enumeration is primarily used for practical purposes, such as bequeathing property, cataloging library collections, or composing museum archives. On the other hand, a list can transcend itself, becoming a poetic and visionary aesthetic and narrative tool. In this case, the list bows in the face of the ineffable, suggesting infinity with a swirling posture. It does not seek to control chaos but rather to examine it.
Michele said: “As I prepared for my first haute couture fashion show, these thoughts lingered in my mind. They prompted me to imagine each unique, limited, and unrepeatable gown as a constantly expanding, potentially infinite lexicon: a non-grammatical list formed through accumulation and juxtaposition. 48 gowns: 48 lists. In each list, material and immaterial elements coexist: measurable proportions, emotional cues, references to painting, annotations of commodities, biographical patches, weaving of cinema, geometries of color, sutures of philosophy, imprints of music, symbolic warp, embroidery of language, fragments of flora, prototypes of vision, fabrics of history, mosaics of narrative, knots of relationship, and so on.”
For Michele, every provocative dress is not just an item; it is a knot in a web of meaning: a living map that carries visual and symbolic memories. It serves as a narrative archive where impossible combinations find harmony, weaving together echoes of cultures across time, resonating with the present. It is a list unfolding into combinations that bloom, evoking and reverberating, until it reaches the edge of the sayable. This is a journey into the dizzying realm of unfinished diversity.
Unlike common catwalk formats, Valentino presented the collection in a theatrical manner, using a scrolling marquee as the backdrop, featuring notes and records of inspiration for all 48 looks. Echoing the theme of “dizziness” and “vertigo,” Michele concluded with a high-frequency flash during the finale, creating a dramatic tension.
