Clairo returns to Alessandro Michele’s red bathroom, fronting Valentino’s FW25 campaign that tests identity, intimacy, and performance in public spaces.
The red bathroom from Valentino’s Paris show is back, this time as the set for Le Méta Théâtre Des Intimités, a campaign that treats the lavatory as a stage for private moments in plain sight. Photographed by Glen Luchford, the images tilt the AW25 story toward cinema, with the tiles and mirrors doubling as scenery and proscenium.
Clairo, newly minted as a Valentino ambassador, anchors the cast with an offhand cool that reads both diaristic and dressed for the occasion. Around her, Alessandro Michele folds in a chorus of characters including Kembra Pfahler, Aimée Byrne, Shane Stevens, Weiyi Fang, and more, expanding the show’s world rather than repeating it.
The premise is simple and subversive. A public restroom becomes a holding area for confidences, performance, and the reflex check-in with the mirror before reentering life. Michele’s press notes meditate on that in-between place and how clothing can shift the self that steps out of it. The campaign asks how many lives and desires could surface in those corridors, then answers with a series of looks and glances that feel caught mid-scene.
Clairo’s tie to the house has been quick to take shape. She attended the AW25 show in the spring, was announced as an ambassador soon after, and chose Valentino for her first Met Gala turn.
As for the clothes, they carry the collection’s codes into close-up. Lace, tailoring, and late-night polish read differently under bathroom lights, which is the point. The glamour is there, but the mood is observational, like you caught the cast between acts. That’s Michele’s theater: intimacy playing out in a common space, with Valentino red as the curtain.
