Alessandro Michele wants to reclaim the beauty of the ordinary with his new Valentino Fall 25 campaign.
The campaign has been photographed and directed by Glen Luchford and features a series of images of models in simple daily moments, such as eating an ice-cream, solving a Rubik’s Cube and playing with a yo-yo.
In a letter accompanying the campaign, which he titled 'The Poetics of Everyday', Creative Director Michele, 52, urged people to focus on the "infinitely small ... seemingly insignificant gestures, on those everyday routines that connect us with the pattern of life".
He wrote: "We live in an era of violent uproar, of shouting images, of words chasing after other words without ever taking root. Such overblown turmoil oversaturates our gaze, producing a solid crisis of perception.
"From this, comes the need for a policy of attention, an ethics for the gaze and the presence, capable of lingering upon the infinitely small, on seemingly insignificant gestures, on those everyday routines that connect us with the pattern of life.
"Re-enchanting the everyday, trying to inhabit it poetically is not an easy task. An anomaly is needed, a disruption in the frantic rush to do. We need to slow down and stop. That’s why I imagined a static point of view that may scan the poetical density of what nestles in the ordinary. A fixed camera focused on life, as it happens. A door opens, a street, a bar. And then: ancient and minute gestures within mornings that seem to be all alike."
He encouraged people to find "magic" in the ordinary and try to exist with "kindness".
He wrote: "What I’m proposing is to [welcome] the magic of the existing with kindness, choosing to stay in touch with what is alive. The everyday is not a backdrop that animates only when the extraordinary steps in. Rather, it’s the secret architecture that supports our presence in the world: a frame of glows and joyful epiphanies enshrined in the little or nothing of our ordinariness. Alessandro Michele, Creative Director."
