
The idea of intimacy is a fairly recent concept. The notion of a private space as we know today, and the implications that come with its counterpart – the public sphere – was defined over the course of the 20th century, with individual identity, family units and the domestic sphere suddenly becoming all the more important post-war. When Alessandro Michele designs a collection titled “Le Méta-Théâtre Des Intimités” – the Meta Theatre of Intimacies – for Autumn/Winter 2025, it’s these categories that he’s turning upside down and inside out. Twisting the confines between intimacy and the public sphere, and rendering bodies a public and political affair, the brilliant new Valentino collection makes categories burst at the seams.
Where better than a public bathroom to question these limits – a club bathroom, even? These are the spaces where the rituals of care and preparation, usually restricted to private spheres, are shared publicly, with friends, strangers, fellow party goers. And with bathrooms at the heart of such a collective public debate recently, this felt all the more radical and queer of Michele.
As models emerged from the numerous cabinet doors leading to the runway, looks that screamed vintage artisto-punk queered bodies and identities, with a rich and baroque layering of references that played with the performativity of identity, and the roots of the true self. The personal and the collective collide, in a moment in history where we are torn apart specifically through these structures. Underwear was worn as outerwear, vintage ’80s touches added a nightlife touch to the pieces, there was an irreverence in the vintage styling of the show, and pieces fused a more couture approach with something far more punk and DIY.
In the press release Alessandro Michele coined the terms dystopian, lynchian, a spatial heterotopia – a politically sound and hyper aware take on the reality we’re living in. Clothes are clothes, but identities are to be celebrated, and the beauty of disturbing these codes, to escape from the codification of norms, is a key to liberation. The freedom and beauty of coming together – in a club toilet – is something rarely celebrated so aptly, so profoundly, so wittily. This is design with a purpose, and we’re here (and queer) for it.







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words. Patrick Clark