His story and the latest Pink PP collection, the meaning behind.
“I have always loved cinema and during my adolescence I dreamed of becoming a movie director. When I discovered fashion and its narrative power, I decided to become a designer. It was for me a natural evolution of a dream.”
After High school, Pierpaolo Piccioli enrolls in the Istituto Europeo di Design, in Rome. Commitment sets in during the first years of work in the atelier. After his first experiences, in 1990 he arrives at Fendi to work on the brand’s accessory line. In this period he approaches the heart of the profession: the contact with high Italian craftsmanship and the possibility of experimenting with a new approach.
After Fendi, together with Maria Grazia Chiuri, he arrives at Valentino to develop the emerging accessory line. It is the beginning of a challenge: to lead the great tradition of the Valentino Couture from dresses to objects, maintaining intact the tradition, the cure and the creativity of its founder. The experiment works on all fronts. In 2008, Pierpaolo Piccioli e Maria Grazia Chiuri are nominated Valentino’s Creative Directors.
In a just a few years, Valentino has become a brand of reference for the fashion system and an international success case. In 2016, with the exit of Maria Grazia Chiuri, Pierpaolo Piccioli was nominated sole Creative Director of the Maison. It is the start of a new era, a further evolution for the Italian brand.
‘I am interested in the idea of humanism that nourishes creativity. The human connection that forms this Maison is for me the best team possible. Here I have discovered that no innovation can exist without a profound knowledge of tradition. At the same time, I know that the sense of limit that springs from this awareness gives you the freedom of thinking of how to trespass it. This, in synthesis, will be the new Valentino direction. A human narration, personal yet unanimous, of a story that is yet to be written.’
This season’s Valentino collection was entirely pink and black. Scored with different versions of Yazoo’s “Only You” – a nod to Piccioli’s individuality-highlighting premise – the collection continued his couture-ification of everyday codes, adapted for ready-to-wear. A t-shirt elongated into a draped minidress, a sporty jumpsuit morphed into a formalwear silhouette, and a generational cargo suit was imbued with a glamorous hourglass shape. Menswear dealt in the very oversized, from giant suits to puffer coats and highly embellished transparent evening tops, all of which will be sold in stores in just pink and black, the way it was presented, Piccioli vowed.
“I always want pink in my collections. It’s a colour I feel you can subvert better, because it already has a lot of meaning. It changed during the centuries: it was the colour of the power of men, then it became girlish… I like to subvert the idea. Today, it means different things.”
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