The Verdict on Alessandro Michele’s Valentino

Goodbye Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, the ornate 19th-century hôtel particulier in the 8th Arrondissement of Paris that for years had played rococo host to the Valentino fashion shows.

Hello, to a giant arena on the outskirts of the city that had been transformed by Alessandro Michele, Valentino’s new creative director, into a sort of haunted maison for his debut show. It had a cracked mirror floor and white dust covers thrown over a maze of armoires, standing lamps and settees, as though they were all just waiting for someone new to come in and blow the cobwebs away. Whoosh. Hello to change!

Sort of.

Change for Valentino, unquestionably. The clothes were markedly different from those that had defined Valentino under Pierpaolo Piccioli, the former designer who had brought a deceptively easy elegance and sublime color palette to the house that an opera diva’s red and a carefully placed ruffle had built.

But change for Mr. Michele? Not so much. Instead he brought the signature maximalist expression he had developed in his former job at Gucci to the house, in one sweep transforming what he had described in a preview as its “dusty chic” classicism into a bricolage of decade-hopping fabulousness.

It was as if all the callow kids on the runway had been invited to a 15-course dinner party in a Venetian palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal to celebrate a new film, “Return to Micheleland” — and beforehand been allowed to rummage around in the walk-in closet of an eccentric contessa who also was an obsessive vintage collector. Pick a character, any character, and there was a costume to match.