As Paris Fashion Week witnessed Alessandro Michele's first couture show for Valentino, many were the head-turning factors. Titled “Vertigineux,” which translates to “dizzy,” the collection recalled the Italian semiologist Umberto Eco’s study of lists – one of many resources that inspired the designer. In his collection notes, he explained how, for him, lists represent “the journey into the vertigo of an unfinished multiplicity,” saying that Eco’s texts “pushed me to imagine every unique, finite, and unrepeatable dress as an uninterrupted and potentially infinite catalog of words.” However, the looks were so expressive to the point that not only did we understand his point of view, but we also lived it during the show. All the elements were perfectly harmonious from the setup to the lights and ambiance.

As the models hit their taped marks, some with a distinguished headpiece or a fully covered face, each had a counting number showing behind her. Forty-eight dresses, forty-eight numbers, and forty-eight lists. In each list, both material and immaterial elements coexist: measurable proportions, emotional threads, pictorial references, commodity notes, biographical quilts, cinematic weaves, chromatic geometries, philosophical seams, musical marks, symbolic warps, linguistic embroideries, botanical fragments, visual archetypes, historic fabrics, narrative intarsia, relational knots, and many more. As if every dress evokes multiple interconnected worlds, creating a feverish and continual layering of references that enhances its uniqueness.