Valentino goes softly, softly
Fashion is always a cypher of the times, but sometimes more consciously so than others. This is one of those times. Whether you regard this as a good thing, or tiresome, probably depends on how it’s communicated. But what we wear is political, with serious implications for the planet. Engaging in a wider conversation has to be positive. “You can’t design clothes with your eyes closed to what’s happening around you now,” says Pierpaolo Piccioli, the creative director of Valentino.
We’re sitting in The Bowery Hotel in Manhattan, shortly after the resort show he presented earlier this week, in a pared-back brick studio around the corner – the low-key intimacy in stark contrast to the elaborate locations of
Dior’s recent resort show in California and Louis Vuitton’s in Kyoto.
The small scale plays well to Valentino’s strengths, allowing its hallmark delicacy and deceptively simple constructions to be seen in detail. Piccioli finds the city energetic, diverse – qualities which Rome, for all its loveliness, doesn’t really have – and a good foil for this most elegant, ladylike of houses.
Hang on. Didn’t that picture Piccioli recently posted of himself on Instagram wearing a baseball cap that emphatically told Trump where to go, suggest his views of the city may be nostalgic? “I don’t feel New York itself is any less tolerant or diverse,” he says.
Twelve months ago, talk of tolerance and diversity in fashion might have elicited hollow laughter. But the industry seems to be trying. If nothing else, the model net is being cast wider, both ethnically and age-wise. Even apparently tiny gestures can create forceful ripples, thanks to social media.
Baseball cap notwithstanding, he generally communicates his message subtly and gently. Not for him the bludgeoning semaphore of a Vivienne Westwood. Sloganeering T-shirts aren’t his bag, either. His softly, softly approach is remarkably effective. At the start of his tenure at Valentino eight years ago – back then, he shared the head role with Maria Grazia Chiuri, who last year departed for Dior – he ushered in a demure romanticism that changed the way women dressed. The gradual striptease that had been underway in fashion since the early Noughties was routed. From Topshop to H&M, dresses referencing medieval maidens and pre-raphaelites became lucrative. Game of Thrones may have helped disseminate the aesthetic, but Valentino got there first.
Now it’s time for a change. This resort collection is sporty, urban, with elements of Zandra Rhodes. (It’s the second time he’s used some of her prints. Rhodes, still cyclamen haired at 76, was at the show, too, wearing a Valentino dress made up in one of her prints, in what Picciolo calls “punk pink”.) More surprising were the references to hip hop (he’s been challenging himself to listen to it). The baggy denims, slung very low on the hips, were the outliers of a collection that was far less precious looking than usual. Some of it may even be machine washable – he thinks.
If this sounds like the dreaded leggings-with-everything territory, rest assured. A Valentino tracksuit is an object of beauty, rendered in a synthetic technical Japanese fabric that probably costs more to produce than satin, and cut with such attention to detail, shape and space that it becomes as valid a challenge to traditional ideas of elegance as Balenciaga’s balloon shapes were in the Fifties. Or how about a silk jersey evening gown with a drawstring waist, white top-stitching and worn over a sporty white edged body? Or an embroidered khaki utility jacket? Or feathered flip-flops and trainers?
Mixing street and sport influences with luxury is hardly new. But it is at Valentino, where ladies still find time to lunch and some don’t even pretend to have jobs. They clustered around the gilded chairs before the show started, in pastel pink mini cape dresses, embroidered tulle, embellished opera coats and the highest version of Valentino’s Rockstud, the golden goose of shoe designs, introduced by Piccioli and Chiuri seven years ago. If they’re ready to take on a tracksuit, there really is a shift in the way the wealthy are dressing.
This is a label that doesn’t just sell accessories. Clothes account for a hefty segment of its turnover, hence the emphasis on making them relevant. Luckily, Piccioli seems to intuit what women want to wear. Yet he insists he never discusses fashion with his wife. Nor even with his 11 and 20-year-old daughters. “Values yes, clothes no,” he says.
He has however, observed how much his elder daughter loves make-up. “All her generation seem to. They use it as self expression and as a reaction against the natural look that my generation loved.” Not entirely coincidentally, the make-up in this show was fierce: double feline flicks that gave the clothes extra attitude.
“So much of fashion today is about context,” he muses. “You take Valentino red, which has traditionally been seen as powerful, even too much, or pink, which is seen as soft and you mix them, and you come up with something new. You change gold studs to white, and they become sporty, put silk ankle socks with heels and you have something that looks less Lady…” The important thing he says, is for the end results not to look laboured. “Even when they’re beautiful and complex, they should seem easy and make you want to wear them all the time.”