Lily Allen, Gwyneth Paltrow and the Return of Rockstuds: Inside Valentino's AW26 Show in Rome

The most immediately identifiable Valentino signature? Rockstuds. More specifically, the Rockstud shoes that featured on the feet—and, failing that, the moodboard—of every fashion fan during our collective obsession era of 2016. It was rare to walk into any bar, office, or restaurant between 2014 and 2017 without spotting at least ten pairs, making them, really, a pop culture icon. Therefore their return—also anticipated in the initial The Devil Wears Prada 2 trailers—is certainly one to celebrate.

Add to that the numerous looks layered over skinny jeans, oversized sunglasses, and a heavy emphasis on costume jewellery, feathers, and sequins, and it's clear we are far from the only ones feeling nostalgic about our outfits from a decade earlier. For Valentino's 'Interferenze' Autumn/Winter 2026 show in Rome last night, creative director Alessandro Michele pulled out all the major style moments—a far more elevated take on the 2016 aesthetic—and merged them with his signature elaborate baroque flair. A mood that the impressive show venue echoed back beautifully.

Heading home to Rome, presumably in homage to the late Valentino Garavani in what was the first ready-to-wear show since his passing, it was the iconic Palazzo Barberini that set the scene. Not an architecture of peace, the show notes read, but "a battlefield where many devices conspire to question form's claim to stability."

"In a similar way, fashion too can be read as a field of opposing forces cohabiting in and on the body," the show notes continued. "The garment is never merely a decorative surface: it is an apparatus that organises the dialogue between discipline and desire, between social norm and individual gesture, between belonging and excess."

Skinny jeans and fur coats. Sequin gowns beside more muted suits. An amalgamation of eras as inspiration. Lily Allen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tyla, Pink Pantheress, Britt Lower and Myha'la Herrold on the front row... Michele's opposing forces are plain to see—much like the competing elements of the Palazzo Barberini itself, each vying for attention.

Pietro da Cortona's 'Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power' spreads across the ceiling, while Gian Lorenzo Bernini's geometry-ordered staircase starkly contrasts Francesco Borromini's elliptical one. "It is a space inhabited by tensions, by layered walls, by visions that measure themselves in matter. What guides and what cracks can share the same perimeter, the same representational ambition: this co-presence generates density," the show notes continue. And clearly, the same could be said for the collection.

"The construction of a garment, like that of a building, is always the provisional result of a negotiation between code and invention, between memory and mutation," Michele's words add—reflecting how the memory of our favourite Valentino pieces is now evolving into the modern day.