The red is not scarlet

The red is not scarlet. It is not crimson. It is Valentino red, Pantone 18-1662, a shade registered in 1959 and worn by Jacqueline Kennedy to the opera in Rome. The dress was silk gazar. The colour has not changed.

Valentino Garavani opened his atelier on Via Condotti in 1960. He was twenty-eight. His partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, managed the business side. The work was Roman couture: structured bodices, full skirts, embroidery that took weeks. The house built its reputation on gowns that required fittings, not just purchases. By the mid-sixties, Valentino dressed Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, and the kind of client who flew to Rome twice a year for appointments.

The signature red appeared early. Garavani saw it at the opera in Barcelona—on a model wearing a dress by Balenciaga—and decided it would be his. He used it on evening coats, day dresses, accessories. It became shorthand. If you saw that red across a room, you knew.

In 2008, Garavani retired. The house has had four creative directors since. The current one, Alessandro Michele, arrived in 2024. He came from Gucci, where he spent eight years building a different kind of maximalism. At Valentino, he has kept the embroidery and the red but added volume, pattern, and a kind of joyful excess that was not there under his predecessor, Pierpaolo Piccioli. The spring 2025 collection included lace blouses with exaggerated sleeves, pleated skirts that hit mid-calf, and bags shaped like soft pouches rather than structured frames.

This is not a house in crisis. Valentino's revenue in 2023 was €1.4 billion. The atelier still makes couture in Rome. The ready-to-wear is produced in Italy. The bags are made in Tuscany. But the aesthetic has shifted, and if you are new to the house, that shift matters. What you see in the boutiques now is Michele's vision, not Piccioli's, not Garavani's. The codes remain—the red, the embroidery, the emphasis on craft—but the proportions and the mood have changed.

Where to start

The Locò bag is the entry point. It launched in Michele's first collection and costs €1,950 for the small size in calfskin. The shape is soft, almost formless, with a top handle and a shoulder strap. It does not have the structure of the Rockstud or the Supervee, the two bags that defined the house under previous directors. The Locò folds when you set it down. That is intentional.

If bags are not the priority, start with knitwear. Valentino's cardigans and sweaters range from €890 to €1,600. The spring 2025 pieces include open-knit styles with floral motifs and cropped silhouettes. They are not basics. They are statement pieces that work in place of a blazer or a coat, depending on the season.

For shoes, the Tan-Go pump is the house's current answer to the Rockstud. It has a block heel, a rounded toe, and a strap across the vamp. The height is walkable: seven centimetres. The price is €990. The Rockstud is still in production, but it belongs to a different era. If you want to buy into Michele's Valentino, the Tan-Go is the choice.

Dresses start at €2,400 for ready-to-wear. The current collection favours midi and maxi lengths, lace overlays, and prints that reference archival fabrics. The fit is not body-conscious. Michele's dresses have ease, sometimes too much of it. Try them on. Sizing runs large in some styles, true in others. The house does not have a consistent grading system across categories.

What you are paying for

Valentino is not a leather-goods house. It is a couture house that makes bags. That distinction shapes the pricing. A Locò bag at just under €2,000 is expensive, but it is not priced like Hermès or Bottega Veneta, where the material and the construction justify the cost on technical grounds alone. At Valentino, you are paying for the name, the design, and the fact that the bag is made in Italy by a supplier with decades of experience. The leather is good. It is not exceptional.

The ready-to-wear is a different calculation. A lace dress at €3,200 reflects the cost of the fabric, the embroidery, and the atelier time. Valentino still employs embroiderers in Rome. Some of the techniques—like the floral appliqués on the spring 2025 gowns—require hand-finishing. That work is slow. It shows.

The knitwear is industrially produced but finished by hand. The price reflects the latter. A cardigan at €1,200 is not hand-knit, but the seams are hand-linked and the trims are hand-applied. This is standard for Italian luxury knitwear, not unique to Valentino, but it is part of the value proposition.

What has stayed the same

The atelier on Piazza Mignanelli, a few steps from the Spanish Steps, still operates. It is where the couture is made. Valentino shows haute couture once a year, usually in July. The pieces are not for sale in boutiques. They are made to order, with fittings in Rome or Paris. The starting price is around €30,000 for a day dress. Gowns can reach six figures.

The couture is not the business. It is the foundation. It is what allows the house to claim a level of craft that most ready-to-wear brands cannot. When you buy a Valentino dress off the rack, you are buying a piece made by a company that still knows how to construct a boned bodice and embroider a train by hand. That knowledge travels down.

The red is still in every collection. Michele uses it less than Piccioli did, but it appears. The spring 2025 runway included red lace dresses, red leather bags, red satin pumps. The shade has not changed. Pantone 18-1662. The same red Jacqueline Kennedy wore in 1962.

What has changed

The Rockstud, which defined Valentino for a decade, is no longer central. It still sells. The house has not discontinued it. But Michele has not featured it prominently in his collections. The studs appeared in the accessories under Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, who were co-creative directors from 2008 to 2016, and then under Piccioli alone until 2024. They became the house's commercial signature. Michele is building a different vocabulary.

The silhouette is looser. Piccioli's Valentino was about volume in specific places—a cape, a train, a sleeve—but the body of the garment was often fitted. Michele's clothes have ease throughout. The waist is not emphasised. The hemlines are longer. The shapes reference the seventies and the eighties, but they are not retro. They are soft.

The colour palette has expanded. Piccioli worked in red, black, white, and occasionally pink. Michele uses green, yellow, blue, and prints that combine all of them. The spring 2025 collection included floral jacquards, striped knits, and dresses in shades of coral and mint. The mood is brighter, less severe.

Where the house stands now

Valentino is in transition. Michele has been in the role for less than a year. The pieces in the boutiques are a mix of his vision and the tail end of Piccioli's tenure. By late 2025, the assortment will be fully Michele's. That is when the strategy will be clear.

The house is betting on a younger customer. Michele's Gucci attracted buyers in their twenties and thirties who responded to the maximalism and the referentiality. Valentino is aiming for the same demographic, but the price points are higher. A Gucci bag under Michele started at around €1,200. A Valentino bag starts at €1,950. The question is whether the codes—the red, the embroidery, the Roman couture heritage—translate to that audience, or whether they remain tied to an older, more formal customer.

The couture is the anchor. As long as the atelier is open, Valentino has a claim to craft that most houses do not. The ready-to-wear is the test. Michele's first collections have been well-received critically, but commercial success is measured in sell-through, not reviews. The bags need to move. The dresses need to sell at full price. The knitwear needs to become a category, not just a supporting player.

For now, the house is in the space between what it was and what it will be. The red is still there. The atelier is still open. The new creative director is still finding his footing. If you are buying in now, you are buying into that uncertainty. But you are also buying into a house that has survived six decades, four creative directors, and more ownership changes than most brands endure. That is not a guarantee, but it is a track record.

The gazar dress Jacqueline Kennedy wore to the opera in 1962 is in a private collection. The red has not faded.