Valentino signs a collaboration with Dover Street Market

If the fashion business is a chess game, Alessandro Michele and Valentino have just begun the match. The brand has announced its first collaboration under the new creative director's leadership—a partnership with Dover Street Market that will showcase Michele's first designs in the windows of the moment's most popular concept store. Founded in 2004 by Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe, Dover Street Market is a symbolic space in the fashion world, a store that for the past two decades has represented the future of shopping, hosting all the most iconic collaborations of recent seasons. The Valentino Avant Les Débuts Spring 2025 collection will decorate the store's windows, while starting on Halloween, pop-up stores will open at Dover Street Market locations worldwide, including London, Ginza, New York, Singapore, Los Angeles, and Paris. To focus more on the Asian market, Valentino will unveil an installation at Ginza and Beijing on November 13, followed by a dedicated brand area at Dover Street Market in London on November 19—with similar spaces opening in Ginza and Beijing at the start of 2025.

With the announcement of the collaboration with Dover Street Market, it seems Valentino and Alessandro Michele are ready to steer the brand more towards street style than ever, despite the creative director's first collection for the house being extremely sophisticated. For Maison Valentino's CEO, Jacopo Venturini, the collaboration with Dover Street Market offers a unique chance to make the historically rooted brand even more contemporary. «Working together, we will bring the Valentino Avant Les Débuts Spring 2025 collection by Alessandro Michele to distinctive and unique pop-ups, new homes worldwide, welcoming new clients into exclusive environments. We are very proud to embark on this journey with Dover Street Market, guided by our mutual appreciation for creativity, excellence, and beauty,» added the CEO. Indeed, with such a distinct artistic direction compared to the previous one (led by Pierpaolo Piccioli), the new Valentino needed to seek new commercial outlets. Moreover, although Michele’s new designs are strongly linked to an "ancient" aesthetic, they still reflect the tastes of younger people and creatives who frequent Dover Street Market, those passionate about contemporary fashion but also (and perhaps more so, judging by market trends) about vintage. Now, the Roman house has only to wait and see if appearing in the most photographed windows of the moment will provide the right boost to sales, as the brand, like other major Kering-owned names, has been facing significant revenue losses.