Have you noticed how many Paris Fashion Week shows have opened with head-to-toe black? It’s almost as if the city’s designers anticipated the dour state of things and the dark moods we’d all be in as the coronavirus crisis escalates. As the Valentino show took place, word spread that the Louvre Museum had not opened to the public today. The clothes on the runway presented a striking contrast with the last-season Valentino outfits in the front row, which were neon bright and covered in jungle prints. Asked afterward if he was feeling newly serious, Pierpaolo Piccioli said, “No, but fashion must be relevant.”
As it turns out, Piccioli had a different kind of relevance on his mind. Over the last several seasons, he’s worked harder than most at bringing a new sense of inclusivity to his shows—remember the famous photo of Naomi Campbell and other black models at his spring 2019 haute couture show? Today he pushed his project further along. There were trans models in his cast and curvier-than-usual types too. He also had male models in the lineup. Backstage Piccioli said, “What I wanted to do was a portrait of a moment with no categories. Fashion has to record and embrace big changes in the world. We have to encourage tolerance and equality.”
One way he went about illustrating his message was to strip away the color and quite a bit of the embellishment that we’ve become accustomed to at his Valentino—his thinking being that a uniform allows the individuality of the person wearing it to shine through. The show opened with a black mid-length belted cashmere coat, sturdy flatform boots (the show’s one shoe), and the house’s new Atelier bag. It wasn’t until look 26 that we saw a dress in full color, though eventually Piccioli did work his way around to many pieces in Valentino’s house red, as well as herringbones, leopard spots, and evening sequins for both women and men. He said that the other way he tried to get his point across about a world without boxes was by putting guys in girls’ clothes and vice versa. The coat that opened his men’s show last month was worn by a female model here.
If Piccioli’s contrarian approach didn’t quite succeed in painting the portrait of individuality that he wanted—eclecticism is better suited to the cause—his sartorial instinct to reduce and the clothes it inspired nonetheless jibed with the season’s neo-minimalist look. And there were certainly understated beauties here: among them a pair of brass-button peacoats, one short, one long; for evening a sleeveless black gown with a train; and the red sequin column worn by Piccioli’s current muse, Adut Akech.
