Pierpaolo Piccioli, former creative director of Valentino, sat down with Vogue's Laura Ingham to discuss his creative vision, highlighting key collections and inspirations.
Few designers in recent fashion history have inspired us to dream quite like Pierpaolo Piccioli, the former creative director of Roman maison Valentino. Last night at London’s Lightroom, a lucky coterie of attendees were able to experience the couturier’s transportive creative vision first-hand, when he joined Laura Ingham – Vogue’s deputy director, Global Fashion Network – in conversation.
Offering a rare peek behind the curtain at how some of the brightest, most joyful fashion show moments of the past decade or so came to be, the illuminated space – which currently hosts Vogue: Inventing The Runway, an immersive four-storey fashion experience which explores the past, present and future of the catwalk – was filled with saturated collages of the designer’s preliminary sketches, iPhone photos snapped backstage, fittings images and, of course, iconic runway looks. The talk began at the start – not of Piccioli’s time at Valentino, granted, but rather at the beginning of his solo tenure at the helm of the house in 2016. Of this pivotal moment in his career, Piccioli explained how he drew inspiration from his then-student daughter Benedetta, who was immersing herself at the time in the works of Nietzsche – in particular his anti-nostalgic notion of l’oubli. Looking to motifs from art and fashion history – figures in the Renaissance tableaux of Hieronymus Bosch, storied couture silhouettes, the work of Britain’s pink-haired punk princess Zandra Rhodes – he explained how he sought to liberate these references from their historical trappings and distil them into a contemporary expression of fashion that, in retrospect, cemented the foundations of his Valentino. A collection that similar could be said for is Piccioli’s spring/summer 2018 haute couture collection for the house, which saw the designer elaborate his vision of “cool couture” – a lighter, more accessible, and overall more wearable take on fashion’s highest (albeit fussiest) form. That’s not to say that he saw himself as a rebel at the time, though: “I love the clichés of couture!” he shared, noting his longstanding adoration of its taffeta opera coats, its decadent embroideries, its feathers and frou-frou. Rather than unpick the seams of couture’s traditions, in this show, he sought to accentuate them with ‘casual’ pieces like white string vests and wide-leg chinos that – by dint of the craft invested in them – were anything but. One tradition that Piccioli did allow himself to break, though, was that of the passage – the list of typically figurative titles ascribed to each look in a couture show. Forgoing abstract, evocative names like “sunset”, he said, he named the silhouettes after the atelier workers responsible for their creation, highlighting his longstanding commitment to uplifting the full team that brings a collection to life. Very cool couture indeed. A collection that aptly spoke to the power and necessity of teamwork in overcoming obstacles was, of course, Valentino’s autumn/winter 2020 haute couture collection – the house’s first of the lockdown era, which, rather than by way of a show, was presented in a deeply moving film created in collaboration with Nick Knight. Twirling on aerial hoops to the then-unreleased music of FKA twigs – a repeat collaborator of Piccioli’s – models towered in extreme, elongated couture confections, all in tiered, ruffled or draping fabrics exclusively in white and silver. The reason for the monochrome treatment was a practical one: “It was lockdown! We were unable to dye the materials!” the designer laughed, though this wasn’t the last time that the designer would plump for a single-hue… There was one more show to dive into before we got to that though: autumn/winter 2022 haute couture – the show that saw Piccioli take to Rome’s Spanish Steps, just a stone’s throw from Valentino’s original atelier, to present a collection that studied and celebrated the designer’s longstanding relationship with the house and its archive. Drawing inspiration from his own experiences of travelling to the Roman landmark as a teenager to watch La Notte delle Stelle – a legendary Italian televised fashion show that would see the country’s greatest stars swan down the storied staircase in looks by its greatest designers of the time – Piccioli noted his intentions to rethink who could and should have access to such contexts in the here and now, noting the importance he places on a deeply human approach to casting. A similar degree of profound humanity was also at the heart of perhaps Piccioli’s most viral show: autumn/winter 2022 ready-to-wear, aka the one that was all-pink
PIERPAOLO PICCIOLI VALENTINO HAUTE COUTURE READY-TO-WEAR FASHION DESIGN COLLABORATION INSPIRATION ART HISTORY TEAMWORK
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