Pierpaolo Piccioli: «Valentino’s modern family»

«Family is also the people you choose, not just the people who succeed you», Pierpaolo Piccioli stated as he described Valentino’s «modern family». Named designer of the year at the British fashion council’s Fashion awards 2022, the designer exclusively told MFF about his manifesto for the Mayhoola maison. The one that brings together a family of choice, where fashion needs no words and returns images of beauty that come before thought. And it is open to inclusiveness to translate the moment and drive change, carrying on the legacy of founder Valentino Garavani, who Piccioli has succeeded, reinforcing and creating new bonds and shared values, as he demonstrated before his acceptance speech at the awards ceremony. In that embrace with his wife Simona, his children and his muse Kristen McMenamy, also with him in 2018, when the designer first won the coveted award. «Ours is a work made of courage, emotions and the vulnerability of the people who work with me. But above all, of awareness and responsibility», Piccioli himself said in this interview that traces the past while looking to a present of emotions and a freer approach, to imagine the future together. «This work gives you the opportunity to make your voice heard in a strong way. And if you use your voice to say what you think, and what you think has substance and texture, it is a great power».

What a thrill...

Yes, a great feeling. To have won, this year especially, means so many things. It is a recognition of the work, but also of the values behind it, mine and those of the people who work with me and those who represent this work. It is a choral victory.

In your speech you referred to the maison, you talked about your family, Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti. Is it a modern family?

Yes, it is. I think family is also the people you choose, not just the people who succeed you.

You mentioned emotion, but how much does an award matter on a personal level?

It is a recognition of what I have done, what I have believed in, but also of the people who have contributed to it, to the change that has been undertaken. Valentino is still a Roman company that does couture, but today it also narrates about a contemporary world, and fashion is also this. As I said in London, I think fashion can and should be a conscious, political act, because it can tell about something else.

You also said that fashion is culture. This is a topic that is increasingly being discussed...

Fashion is when you use creativity to make culture, make changes, propose and guide them. I have always believed that beauty has a power, not as escapism but to drive changes. Because if you see something you do not like, fashion cannot just reflect it, it has to propose change. That is what culture is.

Not just undergo them, it is not a mirror...

Exactly. For me, Rome (with The beginning couture collection, in July, ed.) was a big challenge, because going back to the Spanish steps could be nostalgic. Actually, it was meant to be a change of perspective from the historical moment we were living, to give officiality to something that was already happening at the peripheral level. Sometimes, fashion comes later and narrates what has already happened.

Does it record it?

For me it meant having to have given an internship to those who thirty years earlier could not have walked that runway. This inclusiveness was supported not only by words but in a concrete way.

This victory rewarded the message of this new Valentino. But how much have you changed over the years?

In some ways I am the same, but in a more conscious and radical way. And this awareness has allowed me to let go even more of my emotionality. I have learned to be less rational, to let go of emotions in a more fluid way. I think that is something you learn, to let your vulnerability out, to make it a strength.

Have you ever been afraid over the years in Valentino?

When I started working in fashion, I thought I had made it, what came later was «more». As a person, I am afraid for my children, but at work I feel free, radical and courageous in saying what I think.

Does it take courage?

Fashion and this work give you a chance to make your voice heard in a strong way. If you use your voice to say what you think, and what you believe has substance, it is a great power.

How do you see the Valentino of the future? There is so much freedom today in you…

Ours is a journey, it does not end with the calendar. I have always reacted to what I felt around and that is the way we have all worked, making fashion a manifesto of the values we believe in. Working with image means telling what you believe in, because fashion and image have the power of arriving before thoughts.

Do you think Valentino Garavani’s fashion also had this power in his own way?

I think so. Valentino told the historical moment he was living in, as I tell my own.

We are in the face of creative earthquakes. Why do designers draw so much attention? And also, pressure…

We must be aware of our language, and I think everyone makes their own path. Therefore, it is important for me not to have won this award alone. It is important that a creative is in the right place and is supported by the team. Designers can give direction, but it is fundamental that teams translate their insights into reality.

Where did the idea for Pink PP come from?

Last year, with the Rendez-vous collection in Paris, I brought imperfection and truth inside the palace, inside Valentino, and for the next show I started looking for places in Paris where this was even more evident. However, I came back from that trip and realized that I had not found the life I wanted to tell. At that moment, I was reading things about monochrome artists and Lucio Fontana, about him telling how through those cuts he was not trying to destroy, but to create. I thought I did not like what I was seeing at that moment and that I wanted to create a kind of monochromatic box in which to look deeper at individuals and fashion itself. Those artists after all used one color not to take away but to go deeper than the surface. The moment you cover the arms and legs of the models, you go and put attention on the faces, on the details, you no longer look at what gender and culture they represent, you look at who you have in front of you. After four looks, when you understand that the show is going to be one color, you focus on the facial expressions, the details, the person who finally emerges. It was a way to look at fashion from a different perspective, through the volumes, the cuts, the surfaces, the embroidery. And then I chose pink in particular, for two reasons. Since I have been on my own at the creative direction of Valentino, there has always been at least one garment of this color in my collections, to the extent that I do not even wonder why this happens anymore, and then because perhaps pink is, of all colors, the color that has had the most different meanings throughout history. In the 1500s it was linked to powerful people, it was the color with which society identified power, in the 1800s it became the color of women. In that sense, I wanted to break social conventions, reset the perception and sense of this color as a shade capable of making everyone equal.

Why did you choose a different formula in the latest show?

In Unboxing I wanted to bring the focus to inclusivity and change. I started from the corset, which is the starting piece in the construction of every haute couture garment, to bring it into ready-to-wear. I want bodice-T-shirts to be the basis of every garment, because talking about inclusivity today also means changing the process in which fashion is made, not just changing the casting. For me, making a Valentino dress so that it can be worn by more bodies means inviting more people to be part of the community, who are now not excluded because of their body sizes. There was a lot of street casting in this show, because I want to bring humanity into the collections, not fill the boxes of inclusivity with types. There were sizes of different bodies, which were not so obvious in the shapes as much as in the imperfections, in those details that then become beauty. I wanted to narrate life, not filling boxes. I wanted to make a silent revolution with respect to the idea of inclusivity, not to bring on the runway one different body while all the others are the same, but 20 different bodies that somehow all looked the same.

I remember a garment, a nude bodice with a yellow skirt…

The other idea I started from for Unboxing was minimalism, which for me does not mean taking everything off. You take away when you have an awareness of what you have to get to an essence, and that outfit represents that process. That was the approach to the collection, the idea of those nude pieces, which were then 9 or 10 shades of nude depending on the materials and textures, that talked about different cultures and different genres.

Just like make-up, in a way…

Yes, exactly like that.

What would you take away from Valentino for the next step?

When I decide what message to convey through a collection, I do not think whether people will like or not, I follow my instinct. To communicate emotions, you have to live them.

What do you not like about today’s fashion?

I like when fashion is fashion. I consider myself a designer in the middle between the previous and the digital generation. Fashion is also image, communication, but both go through the object that needs a designer to be born. (All rights reserved)