Fashion Neurosis with Alessandro Michele

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1:10Hi, come in.

1:18Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Alessandro Michele. Hi, Bella. Can you tell me what clothes you're wearing today and why you chose them? I'm very casual because I really didn't think about it. I mean, it seems to be strange for me. But, I mean, the only thing that I thought that it was a nice idea to wear, because I just bought this t-shirt yesterday, it's a vintage t-shirt that is a merch from the concert in Wembley. in the 1992 Freddie Mercury, I think, memory, memorial. I mean, it's a merch that make me think about my teenager time. And it's like a little relic from the past. and a pair of vintage pants, Valentino shoes, flat shoes, and two necklaces from the 18th century Camille necklace.

2:42And you're wearing my favorite style of sock as well. The children's one with the Pointel holes. I have those too I did for my first collection in Valentino they make me think such a romantic piece of my childhood and I thought that they they still look so chic and so yeah so these are Valentino Pointel socks yeah Valentino yeah that's exciting you grew up in Montesacro on the outskirts of Rome and you've said that you felt like you were the child of Lana Turner and of Francis of Assisi and this is such a fascinating combination of attraction between two people and I wondered how did your parents get on to together because was he disapproving of your mother's glamour or even of your glamour they were really different persons you know um one my dad was um a very simple but also very complicated person was like a hippie shaman with long hair and he was also a sculptor he played so many instruments and he wrote he wrote poems and my mom yes she was like the very glamorous mom from the 50s and the 60s and they met just by accident because Because my mom, I mean, she had a twin and her sister had a date with a guy and they used to go out together, the two sisters.

4:55so apparently the guy that was you know for my mom you know in that date of the of her sister got sick and this guy I mean suggested to my dad to go out with her instead of him and so it was a I mean I think that it's like you know the the karma try to make something possible so she told me that uh he was beautiful but so different from her and so wild and she felt so uncomfortable for the first year of the relation but at the end they spend all their life together god that's a such a romantic story i mean they were together just for i think because they loved each other and i think that my mom that was very fragile she thought that my dad was like a little god you know because he was so in conversation with nature animals the wind it was really like Shaman so I think that when my mom lost her sister there was like another mom for me and when my mom lost their parents and everybody I think that she felt so protected by him and I think that it's a really love affair You know, maybe started from a very strange attraction, but she stayed very glamorous all her life.

6:50She didn't care. I mean, I went out many times with them as a little kid. My mom was always perfect. And with this incredible, you know, sweet smell surrounded by perfume and, you know, always perfect. And my dad, he was like a gypsy, you know. And he was beautiful in a way, but I mean, so different from her. But they didn't change. They stay in their own, you know, world for all life. And I mean, I understood and I learned the lesson that you must be who you are, always. That's so interesting because from what I've read, your father was like a hermit and had long, long hair down to his waist, which is really unusual for an Italian man in my experience of, you know, living there.

7:54and he seemed almost like he was from another era and you said he didn't wear a watch because he declined to take orders from a clock, which seemed such a fantastic attitude and I wondered how you had become, so how did you learn to be so organised as you must have to be working in a big fashion house? it's a complicated question but i i'm gonna try to to say that i think that i learned everything i mean from my mom she was really well organized yeah yeah she she worked in cinema and she was the PA of the boss of this company. And she was the person in the family that was really well organized.

8:56But I learned from my dad the freedom, you know, and I'm pretty good because I grew up like working and I learned maybe at the beginning from mom, but after also from all the, you know, the people that, um, that work with me and, uh, it's a beautiful job, but you need to deliver something at the end. So it's, um, it came very natural for me. Yes, I understand what you mean when you say that my grow up with a dad that didn't care about the time, didn't care about, you know, the material thing. He didn't care about money. He didn't care. Yeah, he knew about the time or he managed the time by the sun.

9:55Gosh, beautiful. I was always waiting for him. Maybe there is a part of me that refused to be so disconnected in a way from everybody, you know, because we were all slaves of him. Because an appointment with him would be a hard thing, you know. He was always late. And I remember him saying, oh, it's not me. It's this city, so many buildings. They covered the sun, the shadows. I mean, he was always like refusing in a way the urban life. He was like a wild child in town, you know. But I think that I learned, in a way, the lesson about freedom. So interesting about punctuality and timekeeping, because my father kind of had a wildness about him, but he was very punctual.

11:12And I suppose he didn't want to waste any of this time that mattered so much to him. And then my mother was very late, but she wasn't late in a kind of, you know, poetic way. Like your father, she was just late, and it was very confusing. And then I was late for a long time. And then I remember when I started with my therapist, I said, why am I always late? and he said I think it's a love test and I thought oh yeah it's um you know will they still be there and it is a very passive way of controlling people isn't it it's everyone is just obsessed with what time you'll show up but it's a very boring subject in the end so it seems very like marvelous that you you went against that you found your freedom through exactly the opposite i'm the one that you know i used to to be always very precise and very punctual with everybody I'm always five minutes before the appointment.

12:34And yes, I think that people that are late, you're going to wait for them. You started to think about them before the appointment. So it's a kind of, you know, they asking you to be patient in a way and to love them more than the other people because they're late. And all my friends are late. And one of my best friends is one of the most unbelievable, you know, late person on earth. Her name is Francesca and she's famous because she's late always. And I think that I'm very good with late people. It's because I'm really good also loving people. So I try always to be, yeah, I'm open to understand always the new reason why they're late.

13:47Because they're always a very fun excuse. They're very creative sometimes, you know. They pretend that you believe to all the incredible, you know, accident stories. And I love my friends and I love late people because I loved my dad. As you said before about your mom, my dad was also very creative and romantic in the way that he was, you know, trying to cover his attitude to be always late. And I was so happy because in the time that you're waiting for this person, you are maybe angry, but you're also dreaming to see him just, you know, coming from the corner or coming from the distance, you know.

14:38And I was a child, so seeing my dad coming, you know, to pick up me with his car, always late. was so sweet and because it was pretty rave you know and do you remember a piece of clothing that you became obsessed with as a child i remember so many clothes clothes that are i've been obsessed because i i always very fascinating from the thing that all the friends of mom and dad they were wearing when I was a child. But it was a specific place in my memories that I dreamed about that was the closet of my mom. Because as a very cinematic lady, you know, because she worked for such a long time in that business, she had many beautiful dresses, gowns and outfit that she wore when she went on the premiere of the movies and you know, all this kind of thing.

15:45And I remember this beautiful 1970s long dress, black, very simple, very sophisticated because it was just one piece of fabric with this high neck and long sleeves, black, but on the back, this huge butterfly embroidered on the back, so colorful. And I thought that this dress, you know, was so beautiful. And as a child, I dreamt about how a dress can be fabulous in a very simple way. And I became obsessed with the idea of zoomorphic image of this butterfly. I was maybe thinking about the nature and the things that my dad was a fan of animals. And I loved animals. And I thought, how could be evocative an animal embroidered on a dress?

17:04Especially on an evening dress, the idea of a butterfly. So when I was alone, sometimes at home, I try always to run in the closet of my mom, full of beautiful shoes and beautiful things. But I think that this dress in particular changed my life as a little child. because that theme seems to run through your work a lot the butterfly the animals the insects it seems very much part of your your kind of aesthetic that you bring to your work and you studied it um you studied fashion at academia di costume di moda in rome where i went there too and it was very conventional, I found. And I want, I mean, I was there in the early 80s, way before you, but was your work very different from the other students?

18:12Kind of, but I mean, I've been very precise in the way that I started, you know, to think about fashion. I felt, I mean, I felt myself very different from the very beginning, also not at the academia. And, but yes, first of all, I'm so happy to hear that you went there. It's so strange. At that time, it was pretty popular at the school, especially for costume designers. Oh, for costume designers, that's interesting. And I went at the beginning for that reason, maybe because I grew up with this beautiful idea of movies and cinema. Yes, but I felt myself always different. I mean, I've been very eccentric when I was young.

19:19I don't know if conventional or not conventional, because I didn't have really the idea of what was conventional still now. Thank God. I'm not so good, you know, with conventional. I mean, I like conventional things because I love to make them in a way different. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, well, you bring so much beauty to conventional rituals. you bring all this kind of romance, which is why everybody loves your work and you so much, because you also seem to embody that. And it's so much, it gives so much pleasure. I mean, I'm very open to everything, you know. Maybe I'm not conventional, but sometimes I like conventional things.

20:13I'm very fascinating from the bourgeoisie. I like the ritual of the bourgeoisie, of the very conventional things. My mom, in a way, was very conventional, in a very glamorous way, but she was conventional. And I grew up between a person that was very conventional and another one that was totally against the conventional things. Yeah. Yeah. So interesting, because my mother was probably the opposite. She was very unconventional and I was fascinated by the bourgeoisie. It seemed so luxurious to know what was going to happen and to have this amazing food on a lovely table. And these kind of ordinary things seemed very exotic to me and highly desirable.

21:04And in fact, when I was living in, I went to live in Rome to live with this man who I was madly in love with called Dardo Ruspoli, who I wondered if you'd ever heard about him. He was much older than me, and he had these amazing clothes from Saint Laurent, the 70s, that he gave me because they were too small for him. He showed me how to tie a tie in a particular way, and he was incredibly handsome. And I think he was supposed to be a kind of reference for Fellini in La Dolce Vita film. And I wondered if that part, that Roman world had influenced your work and your thoughts at all. What a beautiful story about Dado.

22:01I know him. He was fantastic. He's been very popular. So I know the story of the family, I know him, and he's been a very, you know, eccentric and very attractive, intelligent and smart playboy. and I think that everybody I mean I mean it's been so popular in the 70s and 80s so I didn't know that he's been the inspiration from La Dolce Vita that's so incredible that's what people used to say because there was a story about him living in Capri with a parrot on his shoulder that he said was totally rubbish but he didn't really care Yeah, no, but I'm sure because he's been so famous and I think that he reflected that time so precise.

22:59And so you had such a beautiful experience with him. Yeah, I would see you in Saint Laurent in the 70s. What a beautiful, you know, closet. It's incredible. I mean, I know very well that building because I worked for Fendi in the 90s and we had our office in the mezzanine of the beautiful palace. So I know very well. And about Rome, what I can say, I mean, I grew up in such a crazy city because, I mean, Rome, it's been so, I think, important for me. I mean, I grew up in a city full of, you know, very decadent things, beauty, dust. You have also this beautiful relation with naked body. Because saints and gods are almost naked everywhere in town.

24:16All the statues. Yeah, the statues. So I remember that when I was like 18, I was a young guy and I fly in New York. And I went in Minneapolis to visit this friend of mine that she was studying there. and I saw a documentary in television and I saw that they censored the nipples of a picture of a lady. And I thought that was crazy, you know, because as a young guy, I mean, I used to see nipples everywhere. Yes. Also in TV. Yeah. In TV show in the 70s, they were not, you know, never censured and also my idea of nudity and be naked and that crazy life you know without rules I mean because people they did what they wanted to do always you know there were no rules and people were always against the rules and they were all you know yes, the Pope is in town and we belong to the Catholic Church but also I think that Roman people, they really believe in God and you can still feel the power of that society in town.

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28:34It's the mission of clothes. Yeah, I suppose it's what you choose to make, you know, it's as simple as what you choose to make a look and then that's fashion. And you describe the clothes that you design that they should look like they've been lying in a suitcase for a few days. And it's a very poetic approach and I feel that a good suit should be able to be worn sleeping on the side of the road like you know one of the characters from a 19th century novel and then um you dust it off but the if the suit is good it doesn't matter if it's creased or rumpled and you were talking about um Rome being this bourgeois place and you have this quite a revolutionary approach and it needs a certain amount of courage to go against this kind of big conventional attitude that specialized in Rome.

29:37And I wondered where that, how did you nurture that? How did you build that in yourself and your work? I think that it's been very easy for me because I didn't belong, me and my family, to that, you know, world. So I saw everything from the hall of a door. spying so I got the best maybe I create my own story you know and I think going back to the suitcase that clothes are beautiful and they beautiful because they belong to a body because they they lived with that body alive. And there is no good dress without a good story. Or, I mean, a dress could be just a piece of fabric and could be a piece of life and could be a piece of, you know, a body, A pleat that came from a suitcase, from a closet, it's a sign of the time, but it's also a legacy, you know, of something.

31:07And I like, I used to pleat when I work on a dress, to pleat in a strange way to make the dress a strange, you know, shape. Because it means that you see it somewhere, that you did something, that you had a conversation moving your legs and, you know, and pressing a piece of that dress, a piece of that fabric. And as a little guy, a little boy that wanted to be a costume designer and being now a fashion designer, I still think as a costume designer, there is no difference between a costume and a piece of fashion. I think that is the same. And I would say in Rome, not in Milan, that I think that is the capital of bourgeoisie.

32:05Yes, definitely. Rome is most the capital of, you know, of mass, of Fellini, of city, of decadent, you know, decadent aristocracy. it's beautiful to act and put on you and wear the dress of bourgeoisie and making strange things and, and changing and just some details of that coats, that, you know, uniform to make a very strange look. because when you have something that belongs that is like the uniform of a certain kind of you know class it's so sexy and so also easy to make it strange yeah yeah yeah and punk yeah i know in fact you said this very interesting thing about vanity that vanity is the strongest productive power you know and it keeps the world buzzing because it incites people to want to be beautiful and to impress others and without vanity there would be neither seduction nor rockets flying into space and do you find people's approach to fashion sometimes is quite reductive that vanity is always bad that to be humble you have to dress in an anonymous way yeah Yeah, because also it's very intellectual, thinking, you know, fashion is not vanity.

33:54But I think that vanity is such a big thing, you know. Sometimes people think that you need beautiful things, you don't need fashion, you don't need to be flamboyant, you don't need to be vain. I think that that's life I thought that was such a great kind of analysis or interpretation of the scope that vanity obviously it can be limiting but it can also be this driving force which you described so well and I really enjoyed that and you also said the word sexiness is old fashioned in your world And I wonder in which way is that a limiting term? I think that, I mean, I changed just the point of view of being sexy.

34:55In a very natural way, when I started as a creative director, I think that I tried to tell something different that it's not against to, for example, the word that Tom created that was so interesting because, I mean, he spoke about sexiness, but also he spoke about ambiguity between the two genders. And I think that he opened really a strange conversation around beauty. And me, it's more that I thought about more than the idea of sexy, about eros. I try to erotize the beauty. I try to open to the old and very interesting idea of Greek philosopher, that Eros is almost everywhere, you know. You can erotize a painting, a skirt, a glance.

36:11Also, the approach with life that can be very sexy in a way, you know. So I think that it's interesting to being more in the idea of Eros that is less connected with sex. Yes. I just show in my way to the people that you can be in a way attractive in a different way. And it's also my way to live. I try to advertise the thing that I love. My house, my bed, a book, a word, an empty space, a color. So it's like that you can make sex multiple times. Yeah. Because you've talked about the masculine and feminine side and you said anyone can choose the hue that suits their sense of self. And I wondered, what is the sense at the moment that you're developing at your work at Valentino?

37:23Yeah, I mean, I think that I'm bringing myself also here in this brand, you know. I think that it's... I mean, I grew up as a guy going through the 80s and the 90s and 2000s, and I understood that being free to put on you what you feel, what you think that is the best for you, it's such an easy thing I mean and I think that is not really complicated you know people they still think about me as a very exotic animal like the one that decided to create this word that is gender fluidity that I didn't do it never I didn't know also at the very beginning So I just try to do my job to reflect and to be connected with life.

38:34That's just life, you know. People, when I started that, you know, long trip in fashion, people were doing what I show to the world already. It's not my creation. And what I'm doing here, you know, in Valentino, I think that there is something that I like about the brand and what I'm doing and what I'm bringing. It's that I'm like opening a very interesting conversation with the idea of dream, with the idea of beauty. Because Valentino himself, it's been obsessed with beauty and with a kind of perfection, you know, in beauty. and I'm just trying to explore the idea of beauty in 2025. It's the same thing from a different point of view.

39:35Yeah. And if you fancy someone and you don't like what they're wearing, does it kill your attraction? Oh, I don't think so, no. No, no, no, no. I think that there is always very interesting in the way that people dress themselves. I'm very attracted from the people they don't know what they're wearing. Yeah. I think that it's very fashionable. I think that that's really the real seed of fashion. No, I loved many people that they didn't care that apparently they were very bad dressed. and I like also brown things. Yeah, because I'm still fascinating from that butterfly that I saw embroidered on the back of the evening dress of my mom.

40:28So I know very well how look a beautiful thing and I like glamorous thing. But I like also the very natural way that fashion or the way you dress is expressed, you know. So even something very self-conscious and deliberately fashion, you're fine with that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I met my partner years and years ago and he didn't care at all about clothes. And the way he looked was so chic and beautiful. maybe in a very strange and simple or wrong way but I'm very attracted from that kind of universe you know yeah it's interesting when I suppose it's like when you were saying before that what's attractive is the person and how they affect the clothes and how they make you become drawn towards them It's the gestures, it's the voice, it's the way you move, it's the air that's around you, it's what are you saying, you know, and they change the game completely.

41:58I know because I find I think I'm I'm put off by cheap trendy clothes on a man who's obviously thought oh this is trendy I'll get that and then it kind of emphasizes all the worst points of his body but then I find if I like that man I kind of can't quite like this bad choice as well which is like an extra bond. It's so true. I like the wrong choices. Yeah. There is always something chic. I mean, if you think that also being chic, it's that you have something wrong on a perfect look. Yeah. No? No, totally. You need the wrong thing. Yes. It's such a, could be a very long conversation about it. You know, it's interesting.

42:53It's the secret of fashion, I think. Yeah. And I loved your Valentino show that took place in the set designed to look like the public toilets all painted blood red. And I find all the best information, especially fashion information, is exchanged in the bathrooms, in the toilets of backstage and of parties and clubs. and that moment where people drop their guard and compose themselves in front of the mirror. And I wondered, did you want to show that vulnerability of the person as they come out of the bathroom in this outfit? It's a very, very particular moment and I found it totally seductive and exhilarating.

43:46I mean, I just watched it on YouTube, but those cubicles opening and then those girls and boys coming out was amazing. Thank you. I was trying to make this conversation, open conversation about who you are and what's the stage. It's when you are dressing up yourself. you're in front of the mirror who is the real you because maybe it's the one that is outside that came outside from the toilet and not the one that is in the toilet I mean it's I think that it's very interesting also because fashion is always hidden in the very specific place I mean, it's such an untouchable part of our life. And it's so very well connected with who we are.

44:54And so I was, yes, trying to figure out who we are, inside, outside, and who is the original one. Because sometimes we think that we are who we are when we are at home, alone. just in front of the mirror, but maybe it's not true. We are the person that you show to the other people. Yeah. You're more authentic. And the other thing, and it's the funny thing, was also to talk about, I mean, that the toilet, they've been always very fashionable, you know. I mean, I met the most interesting people in the toilet club the med gala you know big party I mean there is always an opening conversation in the toilet and we are all the same in the toilet the toilet are for everybody so it's I mean you can be who you want to be in the toilet it's like that you have to take off the mask and you can become in a very quick way friend of someone in the toilet.

46:19Yes, it's so true. I like the toilets. I mean, I think that it's such a specific place. They can be also very beautiful. The one that we built, it's been, I mean, it came from my memory about clubs and people were always, I mean, you went also in the toilet to show to the club how you glamorous looks looked so and Valentino is very glamorous but I mean thinking about Valentino in a club and and how he built in such a specific way the way that many very glamorous ladies and men look in the past, I mean, like Hollywood divas, you know. So it's my personal interpretation on a strange kind of, you know, imaginary space that opened this conversation about, you know, personality and ego and, yeah, beauty and authenticity and many things.