We can say it now: There was an anxiety hanging over what would happen to the house of Valentino after Maria Grazia Chiuri departed for Christian Dior, thus ending her long and amazingly successful design partnership with Pierpaolo Piccioli. No one could be sure who did what, and whether the fairy tale would evaporate with the parting of the ways. Well, as of this sunny Parisian afternoon, that worry has ended. A new chapter written solely by Piccioli opened, and it read just beautifully.
Piccioli is an avid researcher, a fan of the Renaissance, an expert in all forms of couture techniques, and even more importantly, is curious and open to the world beyond the Valentino headquarters in Rome. The first step he took was to liberate the ready-to-wear show from the darkness and anonymity of a tent in the Tuileries, and let the light stream in on the girls who walked around the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild—already a change for the better. They were wearing a collection he’d based on looking at a lot of medieval art, but particularly at Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights—not that the clothes read as historicist at all. “I like to know my history, and then forget it,” Piccioli said at a preview.
He’d also become fascinated by the work of Zandra Rhodes, the great British fashion designer of the ’70s and ’80s, known for her hand-drawn prints and floaty, haute hippy dresses, so he got on a plane to London to see her. “He was wonderful,” exclaimed the pink-haired designer, who was sitting in the front row today. “He and an assistant came to my studio for two days, I showed them everything in my archive, and he asked me what I could do to make prints from the Bosch painting. It’s just incredible to see what they did with them.”
It was indeed: a magical series of handkerchief-hemmed, diaphanous dresses in pinks to reds came out, delicately printed or embroidered with patterns of birds and fantasy vegetation. The girls, their hair done in simple braids, had fresh faces and rosebud pink lips. On their feet were velvet sandals or wonderful dusty-pink suede slippers with a low block heel and ankle straps.
Perhaps the romantic dresses were predictably of the house, though still stunning in all their variety. What was more striking was Piccioli’s daywear. He showed a mouthwatering brocade coat in plush pink, and coral and poison-green patterned boy-cut trousers, and paired them with white shirts in such a way that they also looked completely modern. For other tastes, he cut single-color crepe dresses with an integral cape, the epitome of elegance in vibrant fuchsia.
In short, he aced it, not only meeting expectations but surpassing them too. If Piccioli can keep on developing that rich-looking but practical daywear, then Valentino will likely be adding a whole new constituency of customers to the ones who come to the house looking for dream dresses.
