Alessandro Michele talks Right and Wrong in Fashion and Meeting the Best People in the Loos | FN

I'm very casual because I really didn't think about it. I mean, it seems to be strange for me, but the only thing I thought was a nice idea to wear because I just bought this t-shirt yesterday. It's a vintage t-shirt from the concert in Wembley in 1992, a Freddie Mercury memorial merch. It makes me think about my teenage time, like a little relic from the past. And a pair of vintage pants, Valentino flat shoes, and two 18th-century cameo necklaces. And you're wearing my favorite style of sock, the children's ones with the holes. I love those, I have those too. I did them for my first collection at Valentino. They remind me of a romantic piece of my childhood. They still look so chic. Yeah, these are Valentino Pontel socks.

My dad was a very simple but also very complicated person. He was like a hippie shaman with long hair, a sculptor, played many instruments, wrote poems. My mom was like the very glamorous mom from the 50s and 60s. They met by accident—my mom had a twin, and her sister had a date with a guy who got sick, and he suggested my dad go out with her instead. I think it was karma. She said he was beautiful but so different from her, wild, and she felt uncomfortable for the first year, but they spent their whole lives together. My mom, very fragile, thought my dad was like a little god because he was in conversation with nature, animals, the wind—a real shaman. When my mom lost her sister and parents, she felt protected by him. It was a real love affair, maybe starting from a strange attraction. She stayed glamorous; I went out with them as a kid. My mom was always perfect, with this sweet perfume, and my dad was like a gypsy. They didn't change; they stayed in their own worlds. I learned you must always be who you are.

It's complicated. I learned everything from my mom. She was really well organized. She worked in cinema, was the PA of the boss of a company, the organized one in the family. But I learned freedom from my dad. I'm good because I grew up working. I learned from my mom first, then from the people I work with. It's a beautiful job but you have to deliver, so it came very naturally.

I'm always very precise and punctual, always five minutes early. People who are late make you wait and think about them before the appointment. Yes.

Exactly. All my friends are late. One best friend, Francesca, is famously always late. I'm good with late people because I'm good at loving people. I always try to understand their creative excuses. I love my friends and late people because I loved my dad. He was creative and romantic, covering his lateness. Waiting for him, I was both angry and dreaming to see him arrive. As a child, seeing him come to pick me up late was sweet and pretty rave.

I remember many clothes. I was fascinated by what my parents' friends wore. But a specific memory is my mom's closet. She worked in cinema and had beautiful dresses. There was a 1970s black dress, very simple, with a high neck and long sleeves, but on the back a huge colorful butterfly embroidered. I thought it was so beautiful. I became obsessed with the zoomorphic image of the butterfly and how evocative an animal on a dress could be. I often went to her closet. That dress changed my life as a child.

I was very precise in how I started thinking about fashion. I felt different from the beginning, even at the academy. I'm happy you went there. At that time it was popular for costume designers. I went for that reason, because I grew up with the idea of cinema. But I've always been eccentric. I don't know what conventional is, thank God. I like conventional things but love to make them different.

I'm open to everything. I'm not conventional but I like conventional things. I'm fascinated by the bourgeois and the ritual of it. My mom was conventional in a glamorous way, my dad was totally against it. I grew up between the two.

What a beautiful story. I know him. He was fantastic, very popular, an eccentric and attractive playboy. I didn't know he inspired La Dolce Vita. That's incredible.

I'm sure. He reflects that time so precisely. You had a beautiful experience. I worked for Fendi in the 90s in a beautiful palace. Rome is crazy. It's been important for me: full of decadence, beauty, dust. The relation with the naked body is everywhere—statues of saints and gods. When I was 18, I went to Minneapolis and saw a documentary censoring a woman's nipple, and I thought it was crazy. In Rome, we saw nipples everywhere on TV. Nudity and life without rules. People did what they wanted. There's still the power of that ancient society.

Fashion has always been dying compared to the golden ages of the 50s and 60s. It has to deal with the present. It's like an old lady dying because it's an easy way to express yourself. But it never dies. Even if we decided to be naked, it would be fashion. Fashion is life. Saying it's gone is like saying we're not alive. It surrounds us. This t-shirt is fashion.

It was easy because my family didn't belong to that world. I saw everything from a door spying. I got the best and created my own story. Clothes are beautiful because they belong to a body, they lived with that body. There's no good dress without a good story. I use strange pleats to make a dress look like you sat somewhere, had a conversation. As a costume designer at heart, there's no difference between costume and fashion. Rome, not Milan, is the capital of the bourgeois—of Fellini, decadent aristocracy. It's beautiful to act and wear the uniform of the bourgeois and make it strange.

Yes, it's very intellectual to think fashion isn't vanity. But vanity is huge. Some think you don't need fashion or to be vain. I think that's life.

I changed the view of being sexy naturally when I became a creative director. I try to tell something different, not against what Tom Ford did with sexiness and gender ambiguity. He opened a strange conversation. For me, it's more about eros—I try to eroticize beauty. Eros is everywhere: a painting, a skirt, a glance, the approach to life. It's less connected with sex and more about being attractive in a different way. I advertise the things I love: my house, my bed, a book, a word, an empty space, a color. You can make sex multiple times.

I'm bringing myself into this brand. Growing up through the 80s, 90s, 2000s, I understood being free to wear what you feel is easy. People see me as exotic, the one who created gender fluidity, but I didn't. I just reflected life. At Valentino, I'm opening a conversation about dream and beauty. Valentino was obsessed with perfection; I'm exploring beauty in 2025 from a different point of view.

No. I'm attracted to people who don't know what they're wearing. That's the real seed of fashion. I've loved people who didn't care and were badly dressed. I like wrong things. I'm still fascinated by that butterfly on my mom's dress. I know how beautiful things look, but I also like the natural way fashion is expressed. Even self-conscious, deliberately fashion is fine.

It's true. I like wrong choices. Being chic means having something wrong on a perfect look. You need the wrong thing. That's the secret of fashion.

I wanted to open a conversation about who you are and the stage. When you dress, you're in front of the mirror. Who is the real you? Maybe it's the one outside the toilet, not inside. Fashion is hidden in specific places, well connected with who we are. I was figuring out inside/outside, original self. The toilet is very fashionable—I met the most interesting people there. We're all the same in the toilet. You take off the mask and become friends quickly. The one we built came from memories of clubs. People went to the toilet to show how glamorous they looked. It's a specific place for conversation about personality, ego, beauty, authenticity.

I'm obsessed with light in photography. He captured light in the best way in the 90s, with a cinematic quality. He was the god of fashion photography, but not many designers used him anymore. We started a new story, built a different way to see fashion in 2015. We made little movies and crazy images, showing how powerful fashion is.

I was looking at obsessive things people do, especially in fashion. The obsession with objects can be psychological. We thought about someone who goes mad from obsession. We shot in an abandoned hotel outside Vienna covered in snow for a week. I love that campaign. Glen is a great friend, brilliant and gifted, with so many incredible things in one person.

I don't know. I'm just trying to live, walking and looking around. I want what I do to be alive in real people. Fashion is about hugs, smiles, dinner, conversation. I met Elton and we became friends chatting on a couch. We must enjoy life with beautiful things. I've learned from amazing people and we're still friends. Now I'm at Valentino. I don't know what will happen—that's exciting. I can't wait to buy those socks.

Thank you so much. This conversation was so strange and interesting. I think I'll remember this moment forever. Thank you so much. Thank you, Alexandra.