Valentino, art and fashion meet among the statues of Palazzo Barberini

The last fashion show of the very long season is a destination show: an Italia detour, a Roman diversion, a foray into the baroque heart of the Urbe. Valentino, the maison that has Rome in its DNA, and whose current creative director, Alessandro Michele, is profoundly Roman - as well as by origin, by method and point of view, that is to say, by the mestizo and meta-historical afflatus that incorporates aesthetics and epochs in a single, voluptuous present - parades in the frescoed salon of Palazzo Barberini, where the rational solidity of the architecture dematerialises in a quivering pictorial illusion that breaks through the ceiling and brings a blue sky with triumph where it would only be stone.

The context is chosen with a precise design: it is a vehicle of Romanity, and is electrified by an unbalanced harmony between Apollonian reasoning and Dionysian debauchement that is the same as the collection. Michele sums it all up with the idea of interference, which is also the designated title of the test. "The interference, in this maison, is probably me," he explains at the end of the fashion show, talking about the continuous dialogue with the archive, with the founder and with those who followed him - certain colour choices now suggest a reconciliation with Pierpaolo Piccioli's work because of Yves Saint-Laurent - and how complex it is to find a balance.

Giancarlo Giammetti, a sinistra, applaude Alessandro Michele al termine della sfilata

Until now, Michele has done Alessandro Michele, with all the baroque and grand guignol of the case, but for the past couple of seasons he has taken to subtracting theatre, to moderating artifice, to making the archive speak with a sharper timbre. There is even a red dress. 'Difficult things can produce a lot of beauty,' he adds.

This new fashion show should be inscribed in this stream of thought. It is a work in progress, with persistences of the past - the obsession with the Eighties - and openings to the new - the most seductive and light moments make one think of Christophe Decarnin and his Balmain - while the idea remains that the fashion discourse is entrusted to assembly rather than design, to discourse rather than design. Up to a point, because the use of draping and twisting in some of the men's garments of ecclesiastical imprint is baroque in the most subtle and penetrating way: alteration of perspective. It is from there that perhaps a flow of more powerful, more unhinged interference could start, because one still feels the insistence of a formula.