Pierpaolo Piccioli and his date Frances McDormand honestly looked as if they had the most fun of anyone at the Met Gala, what with their vogueing dance routine in the museum, and their fridge-ransacking for alcohol back at the hotel—absolute Instagram classics. Without any pandering to the stuffy rules of Old World etiquette, Piccioli has managed to gather himself huge intergenerational popularity: a middle-aged dad who is cool, funny, and unpretentiously himself—an immensely humanizing personality who simultaneously upholds the timeless wonder of Valentino haute couture. In this week of menswear shows, he was talking more backstage about breaking down perceived Old Guard barriers. “It’s about how Valentino can become a relevant brand for today’s generation. I want to get out of this exclusivity and to be more inclusive,” he said. “I really want couture to be alive. You can’t keep it to the red carpet.”
The meeting of a couture house and the street: What with Virgil Abloh appearing at Louis Vuitton, and Kim Jones at Christian Dior menswear, it’s the theme of the week. In Piccioli’s formula, he said he’d taken to “bootlegging” Valentino’s ’70s and ’80s scarf prints, and overlaying them on classic fabrics, including the camouflage print he himself has established as a menswear code. The couture payoff: ostrich feathers clipped to the backs of trainers, intarsia peacock wings sewn into the back of a gray sweatshirt and a camel trenchcoat, beaded animal embroideries on performance jackets, and feathered baseball caps and bucket hats.
