The invitation for the Valentino show this season came with a packet of glow sticks. It was one way to fight your way through the ambient gloom.

Creative director Alessandro Michele has been struggling to make sense of his job at a time when many people are simply struggling to survive. He came across a letter written by Pier Paolo Pasolini during World War II, in which he described the joy of seeing fireflies.

For Michele, it was a signal to try to recapture the magic he felt as a young designer. 

“When I first started to work, I felt that there was really a spell that was almost everywhere: on my table, in my pencil, in every meeting with all the amazing people that I met,” he said in a preview. “I would love, in a way, to make it again as it was, because it was really incredible.”

His spring collection harked back to another incredible time: founder Valentino Garavani’s hedonistic existence in Rome in the early ‘80s. Michele tried to distill the essence of that period with items like puff-sleeved blouses, jackets with bows and pencil skirts. 

Stripping away his usual maximalist styling, he staged the show on a plain black set with swirling lights standing in for fireflies. The models even looked like they’d skipped hair and makeup. 

You could read it as a sign of Valentino tightening its pursestrings as its new chief executive officer Riccardo Bellini seeks to reignite sales, but the immediate effect was to put the focus back on the clothes.

They ranged from elevated basics — a zebra-patterned windbreaker, or suits with ironed-in creases — to richly sequined jackets or shorts, many done in intriguing color combinations (think powdery blue with chartreuse, or mustard with deep purple). Bar a couple of naked dresses, his evening looks were as opulent as they come. 

But the murky lighting and models’ stringy hair dragged down some of the looks, like a ruched lilac velvet one-shouldered dress that sagged in all the wrong places. 

The show highlighted the dilemma facing designers, who are under pressure to both re-enchant disaffected luxury consumers and pacify their C-suite. Michele said that with so much change happening around him, he needed to take pause. “I feel myself also in a very sober moment,” he mused. 

Ultimately, though, he hopes to spread joy through clothes. 

“The idea of beauty sometimes seems superficial, but it’s not,” he argued. “Everybody must try to do [something] in their playground to push the idea of life and beauty and light. I will never give up.”