All humans are different, and are all the same: there is a magnificent contradiction in such an acknowledgment. What makes us different from one another is what brings humanity together as a one.
This collection stems from the desire to focus on the humanity of individuals to depict and exalt their feelings and emotions, despite age, gender, race and disposition. The codes of classicism and uniform dressing are the instruments Pierpaolo Piccioli chose to promote equality.
There is another contradiction going on here, and a powerfully human one. Uniforms are usually perceived as items that erase individuality. On a closer insight, however, uniforms bring the individual to the fore. Strict and efficient, the dress disappears, while the face, the gestures and the manners are truly felt, bringing out the human being in all of his or her splendor.
Tailored daywear fabrics in a palette made of blacks, blues and greys that flesh into vertical silhouettes grounded on vigorous shoes. Pierpaolo Piccioli portrays the humans that he likes equally, and dresses them in a harmony of shapes and textures that materialize a shifting and opening of codes. Known symbols usually associated with menswear such as tailoring, uniforms, black leather and the color grey, gain delicacy as decisive yet silent gestures erase dogmas with an idea of fluidity.
Sensuality shines through apparent severity and accessories. Couture in craft, the Valentino Garavani Atelier bag brims with petals, flowers, bows and studs that are a mix of the historic and contemporary Valentino signs. Black eyes, noses, mouths and hands narrate tales of the senses on cabochon-encrusted jewels.
By abolishing excess, as Marlene Dumas depicts by washing out black ink to portray an infinity of different faces, a harmony of differences arises.
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Tags: FALL WINTER WOMEN 2020, VALENTINO, VALENTINO FW 2020
Tue, March 10 2020 » Fashion Blog
The meaning of romanticism, today, is different. It is in particular for men who have evolved out of enduring templates on how they should feel and how they should look like.
New contexts create new meanings. New meanings define new attitudes. In this flow, the sartorial appears to be again of pivotal value. The spirit has changed. For too long, a tailored suit has been considered a uniform, something in which to hide, something to adopt blindly and probably impersonally.
For Pierpaolo Piccioli it is the thoughtful precision of the construction, the attention to detail and ultimately the sense of intimacy of tailoring that matter. Intimacy as a serene dialogue between the individual, with what he wears, and what he wants to express with it.
Tailored jackets, coats, suits, but also sartorially inclined sportswear, are mixed in ways that do not obey to a standard rulebook. An idea of tailoring that is sensitive and romantic emerges, as a structured, lean and fluid silhouette materializes, grounded in commando-soled shoes.
The urge to express feelings is palpable in the ever personal sums of white, ivory, burgundy, lead, blue, black; visible in the romanticism of the Inez and Vinoodh’s flower images that are patched onto pieces; readable in the Melanie Matranga sentimental words magnified all over the surfaces until they become signs and abstractions.
Tailoring, ultimately, offers a vocabulary, not a way of conforming. It is about having the proper words to express oneself, following sensitivity and spontaneity.
#ValentinoMenFW20
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Tags: FALL WINTER MEN 2020, VALENTINO, VALENTINO FW 2020
Thu, January 30 2020 » Fashion Blog
Valentino © Copyright 2019
A study on withdrawing in order to focus on shapes and volumes: their purity, but also their extravagance. As part of Pierpaolo Piccioli’s broader and ongoing interest in inclusion within the once rarefied system of Couture, taking away brings the attention from the dress per se to the personality that gives life to it, from the object to the individual.
Grisaille is an artistic technique that consists of making a whole painting, glass wall or drawing in shades of grey and white. As a monochrome, it is an exercise of uttermost concentration. By subtracting color, shape and volumes come to the fore.
Grisaille as a monochromatic metaphor describes another quest into the spirit of Couture, which is Valentino’s true essence. Universal pieces such as the white shirt, the shirtdress, the dress, the pencil skirt, the bermuda shorts have been reduced to the essence and interpreted with the richness of Couture, in cotton poplin. The ordinary becomes extraordinary.
As permutations unfold and follow one after the other like shades and shadows multiplying on a grisaille, touched by the sense of craft of jewels, shoes and accessories, color slowly slithers in. It is a bright, compact and fluorescent color, immaterial as silk georgette on shapes that have been empties from the inside letting the body itself become structure.
The movement proceeds to bold fauvist prints charged with a narrative urgency, only to slow down and sink again into total white. Subtraction retains the frenzy and the richness of a whole universe of aesthetic references, just like the non color white is ultimately a sum of every color of the spectrum. The journey is now complete and can commence again.
Withdrawing is a process of discovery and of selfdiscovery. As the individual blends in, personality stands out. Quietly, on the inside.
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Tags: SPRING SUMMER WOMEN 2020, VALENTINO, VALENTINO SS 2020
Thu, October 3 2019 » Fashion Blog
Valentino © Copyright 2019
Traveling is certainly a physical activity, but it truly enlightens and enriches when it takes the form of a free-flowing, borderless meandering of the mind. Travelers who go on journeys within the realm of their own minds are capable of transcending boundaries to reach the elsewhere, expanding possibilities and imagining utopias.
As signs and traces of different cultures mingle and flow in a sartorial present that makes everything possible, an exotic utopia materializes. Differences come together and everything finds a meaning – another meaning, with an unexpected significance – in the dialogue with the other.
Lines flow, colors glow as the high and the low, the bright and the earthy mingle and twine. The purity of the djellaba, the simplicity of the caftan, the human authenticity, a touch of handmade crochet and embroidery encounters the precision of the suit, the ease of flowing outerwear. Imaginative landscapes – exotic utopias, indeed – created by artist Roger Dean, who designs the elsewhere, many elsewhere’s, in bright colors onto surfaces, materializing imagined places, making them visible, hence real.
As the journey changes the traveler, readdressing habits, gestures and views, so the act of dressing gains a lighthearted absent-mindedness: a straw hat on the head, Valentino Garavani Rockrunner Plus sneakers at the feet, practical bags in the hand. There is no final destination to the journey, which happens in the here and in the now.
Utopias have the power to shape what is not there, and are charged with the urge to make it happen. The elsewhere is made possible.
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Tags: SPRING SUMMER MEN 2020, VALENTINO, VALENTINO SS 2020
Mon, June 24 2019 » Fashion Blog
A Maison is defined by values, prior than from an aesthetic. The grace of Couture is a real human touch that just like an imprint leaves a sign on everything. It is the Valentino sign, that beyond the Atelier, encounters the street and defines a new code.
Today poetry is in the streets. It appears suddenly when necessary, on walls and it asks for it to be read. An antique art, deeply human and real, changes its contest but not its meaning. It opens and it combines. It becomes an instrument for all.
A gesture of love where Couture and poetry come together, maintaining reality as a horizon. Four contemporary poets – Greta Bellamacina, Mustafa The Poet, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Robert Montgomery – entrust their beliefs on love in a small publication: Valentino ON LOVE.
Jun Takahashi from Undercover, looks to love as well, creating collages, overlapping’s and iconographic puns that in their way act as poems: sharp and immediate.
Pierpaolo Piccioli merges the graphics and the verses with a delicate spirit of synthesis. He embraces the layering of the contents within the short and essential silhouettes, engaging words and prints, intarsias and nuances, matter and jacquards in a composite harmony.
He breaks black with color, uncovers legs to place them on high heels. He defines a code where the lyricism of Couture changes it context but not its meaning. It opens, and it includes.
Love is the bond that connects all. The most simple and most complex of gestures encourages to yield its intricacy in the pureness of a feeling, letting the emotion vibrate spontaneously.
The signs merge, resulting ethereal: they let themselves come upon, impalpable, just as sprouts ready to blossom in everyone’s imaginary, blooming in notions that free fantasies and emotions.
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Tags: FALL WINTER WOMEN 2019-20, VALENTINO, VALENTINO FW 2019-20
Thu, March 7 2019 » Fashion Blog
Fashion is authentic only when it speaks about life. Beauty is connected to time, elitism is destroyed. The street encounters Couture, in a clash. Breaking the schemes, converting the extraordinary into ordinary.
Exploring unknown territories, to let oneself go in order to learn. Musical horizons, antique analogies, feathers to indulge in. Angel’s wings and classic art, hurled on sidewalks. Bombers, trench coats, tracksuits, suits: trap lyrics in a live recording.
Baseball caps, cloche and feathered sneakers: pieces that break it up but that rhyme at the same. Urban sceneries merging with personal associations. To mark, to sign, to seize: in order to be and to be there.
VLTN, as a logo and as lettering, that multiplies across the different surfaces. Magnified, cut out and duplicated. Couture as in personal and extravagant, that comes from the street. A fuchsia beat, mint green, pink, black, white.
Pied de Poule and classic patterns interrupted by the bootlegging of overprinted logos. Beauty in time with time. Couture encounters streetwear, in the street. Truly. Now. #ValentinoMenSS19
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Tags: SPRING SUMMER MEN 2019, VALENTINO, VALENTINO SS 2019
Wed, July 11 2018 » Fashion Blog
Romanticism is strength. It places sensibility before rationality, authenticity before stereotypes. Grace is authority. It finds in kindness the tone of expression, and individuality in etherealness.
A deeply personal and therefore authentic point of view, indisputable because perceived. Being romantic is a way of living life. Giving form to the freedom of being, subverting clichés.
Flowers that spread, enlarged as exclamations, palpable as intarsia. Fabrics become present and compact, while silhouettes stratify. Trousers as a constant, jackets as a new addition, day as a horizon.
The femininity of a plumb, of a pleat, of a metal feather or of a drape on a bag. Grace in the movements, seized and stuck in a moment, that quiver. Verticality as vigor.
Colors multiply in the symphony of a monochrome that is disrupted by multiple weavings. Black marks and expands, powerful. Etherealness that leaves a sign. Presence in a moment: strong, romantic.
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Tags: FALL WINTER WOMEN 2018-19, VALENTINO, VALENTINO FW 2018-19
Thu, March 8 2018 » Fashion Blog
Watch the Valentino Fall Winter 2018-19 Fashion Show in Live Streaming – Paris 4th March 2018 at 5.00 PM CET. Stay Tuned! #ValentinoFW1819
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Tags: FALL WINTER WOMEN 2018-19, LIVE STREAMING, VALENTINO, VALENTINO FW 2018-19
Sun, March 4 2018 » Fashion Blog
Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild 75008 Paris January 17th, 2018
Romanticism: a subtle subversion of interiority laid bare. Giving shape to the freedom of being oneself, without labels and without belongings. Grace as a way of being and as a mean of expression.
Aristopunk: the delicate rebellion that sprouts from awareness. Breaking the schemes, bringing what is known to unknown territories to making it conventional. The extraordinary that becomes ordinary.
Free associations give meaning to new uniforms. Sleight adjustments are individual quivers on dry and vertical figures. The coat as a cover, the tracksuit as the new suit, the blouse as a base.
The short bomber, the down jackets, created in collaboration with Moncler, the nylon messenger bag and the white sneakers as elements of a revised urban repertoire. Animal intarsia from the Valentino archive and constructive artistry leads the savoir faire Couture in the everyday routine, making it normal.
A binding sequence of blue, black and grey. Unexpected and interior, harmonies of off tones of turquoise, dark green, mint green and purple. Romanticism as an authentic urgency to show oneself for what one is, not a garrulous ostentation of how one would like to appear.
Authentic rebellion has a grace. It does not scream, it is a state of mind.
#ValentinoMenFW1819
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Tags: FALL WINTER MEN 2018-19, VALENTINO, VALENTINO FW 2018-19
Tue, February 20 2018 » Fashion Blog
Watch the Valentino Spring/Summer 2018 Men’s Fashion Show in Live Streaming – Paris 21st June 5.30 PM CET. Stay Tuned…!!! #VALENTINOMENSS18
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Tags: LIVE STREAMING, SPRING SUMMER MEN 2018, VALENTINO, VALENTINO SS 2018
Wed, June 21 2017 » Fashion Blog
