Inside the Marciano, the designer toasted his Los Angeles friends at a release of Mark Borthwick’s new volume documenting his recent collection
Words by ELIZABETH VARNELL
A circular kaiserpanorama installation at the Marciano Art Foundation’s headquarters gave a starry crowd a peek at the looks in Alessandro Michele’s first haute couture looks for VALENTINO on Tuesday, April 28. A carousel of images of the Spring 26 presentation, lensed by Mark Borthwick and assembled in a new volume, Specula Mundi, could be seen through small windows at the cocktail party hosted by Michele and Valentino CEO Riccardo Bellini. On hand to take in the series of looks shown in a medium popularized as a precursor to film were C’s current and previous cover stars Dree Hemingway and Maude Apatow, as well as Patricia Arquette, Teyana Taylor, Mindy Kaling, Sombr, Owen Thiele, Tate McRae, Hannah Einbinder, Hacks creators Paul Downs and Lucia Aniello, and many more.
At the cocktail party, guests got a look at the limited-edition book (with a title meaning “mirror of the world”) that will be available in numbered copies and distributed at select Valentino boutiques in time for a May 11 debut. Inside are more than 400 images of the couture (the collection and book share a name) as interpreted through the British photographer’s eye. His previous collaborative work with Michele included a Gucci campaign with Harry Styles when Michele helmed the Milan-based house. The photographer’s 1990s portraits of Chloe Sevigny and Kim Gordon, as well as album covers for Sinead O’Connor, came to mind while paging through the new work. Inside, pages mimicked the idea of viewing the clothes through the kaiserpanorama’s small window — as guests did during the evening — with a focus on the fabrics, the silhouettes, and the handiwork. Speaking about the collection last year when he was preparing to present it, Michele compared his design philosophy to that of the house founder: “My way to approach beauty is more sauvage. I like the wrong things that become beautiful, I try to be wild.” Borthwick is similarly experimental, and the striking collaboration between the two creatives was the talk of the evening.
A carousel of images of the Spring 26 presentation, lensed by Mark Borthwick and assembled in a new volume, “Specula Mundi,” could be seen through small windows.
May 4, 2026
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