Pierpaolo Piccioli was inspired by a Renaissance painting technique of 'taking away' — and a soupçon of Richard Alvedon for the new Valentino collection.
“Do you know this technique, called grisaille?” Pierpaolo Piccioli queried about a 16th-century painting process. “It consists of taking off in order to give life and shape and to go to the essence.” Piccioli spoke during a preview of the Valentino collection he showed on Sunday, one both lyrical and grounded. The creative director is devoted to the brand’s position as a couture house.
Yet paring down is about more than translating a dramatic haute sleeve at a ready-to-wear price point; sometimes, taking away allows the woman to emerge more powerfully from the clothes. “[It] brings the attention from the dress per se to the personality that gives life to it, from object to the individual,” Piccioli wrote in his program notes. That sentiment echoes what Miuccia Prada said of her collection in Milan, “the person is more important than the clothes.
Such similar thought processes articulated by two of the world’s most prominent designers plays into the sea change that continues to upend fashion, making it volatile, fascinating and ultimately, introspective to a degree that has been missing in the past. Not that Piccioli, Prada, or any other non-sociopath designer has ever deemed a dress more important than a person. Only, now, they feel the need to state the obvious, verbally and on their runways.
Which is not to say Piccioli has sworn off color; it’s one of the hallmarks of his work, and he continues to love it. In fact, the collection pulsed with many of the themes he has developed while catapulting Valentino into the forefront of fashion influence — color, volume, embellishment — but here with newfound restraint. Or maybe that’s the wrong word.
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