Alessandro Michele’s creations for Valentino speak in their own patois—a babel of idioms framed in cinematic staging and high-pitched ornamentations. Their finesse—the delicate cuts, the intricacies, the craft of the atelier—can sometimes get hushed, overshadowed by the drama. But in bare-boned resort showrooms, stripped of runway spectacle and creative narratives, clothes speak plainly like truth-tellers. Some sing, some whisper, and some just fall silent.

Turning a potential cacophony of 132 looks into a symphonic whole demands a designer not only gifted with “a lot of imagination” (as Michele described himself to my colleague Sarah Mower in her spring couture review), but almost possessed by the djinn of assemblage. Yet even obsessions can apparently be house-trained. Resort proved that Michele can, somehow, resist the siren call of maximal accessorizing—though for him theatricality, being almost a birthright, always lurks in the wings.

In the lookbook, models were shot sprawled across a pristine bed draped in pink quilted satin. No hints of dangerous liaisons here, just innocent recreational pastimes: brushing hair, nibbling breakfast, doing crosswords, and engaging in polite tête-à-têtes. The blush-toned tableau stood in stark contrast to the fierce blood-red-public restroom set of the fall show—a sort of calming turning of the page, innocuous and pacifying, the meaning of which, absent the designer to enlighten us, we can only presume. What didn’t require explanation, however, was the collection’s sheer breadth: a prolific, multifarious range of Michele-isms cutting across day, night, and everything in between.

New seasonal additions riffed on the suit, featuring fitted, cinched-waisted, petite jackets worn over cropped flares, or over bermudas as roomy as skirts. Graphic, outlined, neat trapeze silhouettes in black-and-white alternated with the flou of billowing plissé gowns printed with florals or Plus de Pois polka-dots. Eveningwear had a more laid-back edge, a chic standout being a white one-sleeve blouse paired with a sleek floor-length black skirt.

There was more rewriting of Valentino Garavani’s famed draping playbook, too: Look 1 offered a ruched Valentino-red minidress straight from the archive, its bodice pleats gathered in frontal cutouts. And the bow, another Garavani favorite, dotted everything from hems to heeled mules like a frivolous punctuation mark. On the decorative side, Gobelins tapestries were crafted into boxy waistcoats trimmed with marabou and fringed micro shorts (a Gen Z glow-up perhaps). Elsewhere Michele’s urge for embellishment—seen in a series of embroidered and sequined fabulous showstoppers, often paired with matching capelets edged in curled feathers—was interrupted by luscious, slender and elegant evening gowns in plain soft pastels or classic black.

Le jeune homme Valentino dialed down the decadence and went more formally tailored, with discreet torchon piping or printed edges as the only indulgence to decoration. Though decoration did eventually return in full for evening, with robe jackets lavishly embellished and cinched with sashes, and floral Gobelin tapestries making maximalist appearances on waistcoats. Sprawled across soft, padded beds in fluffy harlequin cardigans or sweaters jacquarded with tiny felines, the boys seem to doze off, blissfully unbothered by controversy. Reality has turned a bit too sharp around the edges, and with the world growing less hospitable by the hour, who isn’tco tempted to bury their head under a pillow, and call it a catnap? Arrivederci