For SS23, Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli wanted to “translate the idea of couture into ready-to-wear and embrace different individualities and different skin tones”.
’s Pierpaolo Piccioli wanted to “translate the idea of couture into ready-to-wear and embrace different individualities and different skin tones”. Below, Anders Christian Madsen shares his key takeaways from the show in Paris.Under nearly every look in the Valentino collection, you could spot a special kind of underpinning. A trick of the eye, it was matched exactly to the model’s skin colour. In the age of Skims we’re familiar with those types of garments, but this wasn’t shapewear.
Under a very sheer classic short Valentino dress in circular lace and sequins, or a red flouncy oversized unbuttoned blouse worn with matching leggings, the skin-toned bodies functioned as illusions of the naked body itself. Worn on its own with highly contrasting sequinned green trousers and a matching purse and heels, the body – harmonised precisely with the model’s skin tone – had a statuesque quality about it.