The worlds of fashion and entertainment have never been more entwined, and that symbiosis has produced a slew of important celebrity-designer friendships: Timothée Chalamet and Haider Ackermann. Luca Guadagnino and Jonathan Anderson. But few are as visible as the alliance of Harry Styles and Alessandro Michele. Two respective titans of industry whose careers apexed over the last decade, the English pop star and the Italian designer have been pals for nearly as long.
After his boy band One Direction announced their indefinite hiatus in 2016, Styles spent much of the next few years launching his solo career while wearing Michele’s Gucci, where the designer served as creative director from 2015 until 2022. Before Michele left the brand that year, he and Styles even collaborated on a Gucci capsule collection featuring the sorts of dandyish suiting and psychedelic-lite prints that the musician had become synonymous with while promoting his third studio EP, Harry’s House.
Unsurprisingly, Styles and Michele’s friendship survived the designer’s recent move to Valentino, for whom he debuted his first collection in Paris this weekend. Styles sat front row, wearing a pumpkin-orange crewneck sweater embroidered with a small Valentino “V” logo, its hems accented with the frilly collar and cuffs of a ruffled blue dress shirt peeking out underneath. The rest of Styles’s ensemble—dark trousers, espresso-brown leather loafers, orange-tinted aviator sunglasses—was certainly more subdued than his out-there Gucci looks of yore. The outfit was more in line with the musician’s casual personal style, which typically oscillates between simple designer sweaters and slacks and cheeky athleticwear as of late.
At the show, Styles posed for photos alongside fellow actors Colman Domingo and Salma Hayek (the latter of whom is married to François-Henri Pinault, the CEO of Gucci’s parent company/Valentino shareholder Kering), as well as model/former French first lady Carla Bruni and Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino.
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