In the search for a creative way to overcome the Sturm und Drang of this strife-filled time, Pierpaolo Piccioli took Valentino on a space mission. In a manner of speaking, anyway. The Spring collection, he said, had been partly inspired by the perspective of the Apollo moon landing, in which the Earth was photographed from space and revealed in all its natural wonder. By the same token, by psychically hovering over the history of the house, Piccioli discovered something else to appreciate that he’d never gone to before. “I wanted to get back something of the glamour of the ’80s that Mr. Valentino did so well,” he said.
Voilà: being grateful for that which we’re blessed with—a fresh starting point for Spring that mixed clear plastics with sequins, and athleticism with glam and roses. The collection veered away from the familiar visions of Renaissance princesses, but it still played young—curiously, almost into the territory of Helmut Lang’s ’90s NASA-influenced collections, with its pared-away, layered necklines; utility jackets; a jumpsuit; and lean jeans.
Still, no matter. In its own way, Piccioli’s collection reads as yet another strand in the season’s enabling of the impulses of girls who just want to dress up and go out dancing. Rather than full-on disco flash, there were mini bubble dresses and ultra-shortened translations of Mr. Valentino’s ruffled couture dresses of the ’80s.
Piccioli has his own handwriting and the wonders of Valentino’s inimitable powers in the embroidery at his disposal—the coming together of clear plastic sequins and flowers in a little T-shirt shift dress at the end was delightful. Strangely, though, this collection was somewhere on the spectrum of all the other designers who are doing disco and glam in ways that look forward by retrieving a past. It’s quite a crowd now: There’s Anthony Vaccarello abbreviating Saint Laurent’s glamour; Alessandro Michele at Gucci with his ’70s Elton John references; Julien Dossena at Paco Rabanne doing space age–meets–’80s disco. Valentino girls still have their purely romantic escape routes (the designer hasn’t abandoned the long, covered-up dresses the label is known for), but Piccioli ticked the boxes of a whole other set of seasonal trends here, too.
