Alessandro Michele and Franco Battiato inhabit a liminal space where Valentino’s vision meets the rhythm of music, their connection a delicate thread. Each step, aligned with the haunting ‘Passacaglia,’ unveils the beauty of fragility and the profound essence of vulnerability
Words DOMENICO COSTANTINI
We are creatures on the edge, suspended between shards of glass. Alessandro Michele and Franco Battiato walk together, invisible yet bound by a thread that stretches across time. “We are fragile,” Michele murmurs, as each step down the runway cracks Alfredo Pirri’s mirrored floor beneath. Every reflection is an illusion, every movement a risk, a possible misstep. Yet, it is precisely in this delicate balance that life’s true meaning emerges: the realization that infinity is not ours to possess. How can we exist without time, without the limits that define us?
The “Passacaglia” is their guide—a centuries-old rhythm pulsing within them both. Battiato, alongside Sgalambro, reinterprets Stefano Landi’s echo: “People are cruel, and often unfaithful.” Michele listens, absorbs, and translates it into gesture, fabric, and an immaculate show. Each step down the runway becomes an unspoken verse, oscillating between the brutal present and a longing for the past. “I wish I could go back,” sings Battiato, and Michele seems to share the sentiment, revisiting every detail, every thread, as if searching for something that slipped away. But there is no going back—only forward, step by step, through life’s Passacaglia.
The self transforms, dissolves, reassembles. “I was in fifth grade when I stumbled into my own existence,” Battiato reflects, and within that memory, we see Michele’s hand sketching the future of Valentino, exploring the fragile line between what was and what will be. The show is a suspended space, a limbo between the fading present and the not-yet-arrived future. And yet, everything is inscribed in this eternal cycle, this continuous return without end.
Every show, every note, every step is a dance on the edge of the invisible. The Passacaglia plays on, a rhythm that persists and returns—like life itself. We are constantly exposed, walking on the razor’s edge, but it is within this vulnerability that our true essence lies.
