valentino asks guests to bring books to its runway show for donation to public libraries
VALENTINO TURNS THE RUNWAY INTO A LIBRARY OF POSSIBILITIES
Alessandro Michele stages Valentino’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection at Paris’s Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève as an encounter between clothing and everything that remains unknown. Titled Antibiblioteca, the show takes its starting point from the idea of the antilibrary, a collection of unread books whose value lies precisely in what they might still contain. In Michele’s formulation, fashion can operate in much the same way. Garments do not need to be worn, owned or consumed to have meaning. They can exist as possibilities.
Guests were asked to bring a book from their own shelves, chosen with the thought that someone else might want to read it, with the books later donated to local libraries. The invitation to the show was designed as a catalogue of imaginary books, with titles for books that do not actually exist. They can only be imagined, setting up the idea behind the show: that there is value in what we have yet to discover, just as there is value in clothes that may never be worn. Antibiblioteca looks at the collection as a cluster of ideas and possibilities, whether or not they ever become part of someone’s wardrobe.
the show MOVES THROUGH BIBLIOTHÈQUE SAINTE-GENEVIÈVE in paris
The concept draws on Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s account of Umberto Eco’s library in The Black Swan. Taleb describes the unread books in Eco’s collection as more valuable than the books he has already read because they represent the limits of his knowledge and the possibility of discovering something beyond it. Alessandro Michele extends this argument from books to clothes. Every fashion collection contains objects with different futures. Some garments will appear briefly on a runway, some will survive primarily through photographs and moving images whole others will enter wardrobes and remain almost untouched. Their existence does not begin or end with their practical use.
Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève’s long wooden reading tables, green lamps, iron railings and densely occupied bookshelves create an environment organized around concentration, memory and accumulated knowledge. Against this architecture, the models introduce another kind of archive. The clothes are temporary, moving through a space built to preserve what came before. Books remain on shelves while the collection passes between them, producing a quiet contrast between permanence and ephemerality. The effect is also a reminder that fashion itself is an archive. Its forms return, mutate and acquire new meanings. Historical references can become contemporary propositions, while an image from a runway can continue to circulate long after the garment has disappeared from view.
WHY ALESSANDRO MICHELE GIVES FASHION ROOM TO REMAIN UNREALIZED
Michele’s idea also questions how we measure the value of fashion. If a garment is judged only by how often it is worn or how useful it is, we miss much of what fashion can do. A runway look can become an image, a memory or an idea. It can suggest a new shape or a different way of seeing the body. It can stay with us long after the show, even if it is never worn. This connects to Giorgio Agamben’s idea of potentiality, which Michele uses to describe the possibilities that remain open before something becomes real.
A fashion show brings together clothes that may never enter everyday life, while showing us what that life could look like. There is something hopeful in this idea. An unread book is not useless because it has not been opened, just as an unworn garment is not without value because it stays in a wardrobe or exists only as an image. Both hold the possibility of something that has not happened yet.
project info:
name: Antibiblioteca
fashion house: Valentino | @maisonvalentino
creative director: Alessandro Michele | @alessandro_michele
collection: Spring/Summer 2027
location: Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, France
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