Naomi Campbell in Valentino couture.Photographed by Ethan James Green, Vogue, November 2020
Of late, fashion’s cardiogram has featured dramatic peaks and valleys. This morning it was activated by the news that Pierpaolo Piccioli is leaving Valentino. The Roman joined the house in 1999 and designed accessories there through 2008 when, with Maria Grazia Chiuri, he became co-creative director; he has flown solo since 2016 when she joined Christian Dior.
It’s tempting to see Piccioli’s all-black fall 2024 ready-to-wear collection as a twin elegy, lamenting the state of the world and his own leave taking at Valentino, though that doesn’t sync with the designer’s belief that the color is actually lustrous. As he put it: “If it’s true that black soaks in all of the light, I imagine that this light at some point will come out of it.”
Radiance is what defined Piccioli’s Valentino from the start. His spring 2017 debut was illuminated with shades of butter yellow, ruby red, and a hot pink, that would be refined and edited into the sensation that was Valentino Pink PP, which debuted at the fall 2022 ready-to-wear show. This “pink-out ” was built on two traditions set by Valentino Garavani: the proprietary color (Valentino Red) and the monochrome all-white collection he presented for the spring 1968 couture, which established his reputation in the wider world of fashion.
Beyond their optical brilliance, Piccioli’s designs are distinguished by a sort of luminance of purpose. He came to use fashion as a platform for creating the world he wants to see, one that is diverse, accepting, and collaborative. “For me, it’s about more than clothes,” Piccioli said at the time of his spring 2019 couture collection for Valentino, at which he recreated a famous 1948 Cecil Beaton photograph of Charles James dresses using only Black models.