The upcoming Valentino haute couture fall/winter 2022-2023 show is presumed to mark a new beginning for the Italian maison. As a starting point, Pierpaolo Piccioli looked back at his past conversations with founder Valentino Garavani, therefore leading him to wonder about the house’s heritage and roots. Since his appointment as creative director in 2016, Piccioli has amplified new values for the brand. The last haute couture spring/summer 2022 showing, in particular, broke the house’s constructs of exclusively using house models of one size. Instead, Piccioli brought in 10 house models with different body types to walk the runway. From that process, he created a genre of haute couture that could be for anyone—fuller-figured, average sized, and so on.
With the upcoming haute couture collection titled ‘The Beginning’, Valentino is forging a new path in the modern day era. Piccioli has picked the Piazza di Spagna in Rome to showcase his interpretations of art, history and the pleasures of everyday life. Lauded to be “a natural extension of the atelier”, a few activations are also lined up to mirror the maison’s commitment to raise social and political issues. As such, special appearances from a number of fashion and design schools are also expected to attend and pledge the restoration of common public areas—the Roman public baths and Spanish Steps being some of them. To Piccioli, Roma is the place where everything starts. “The life, the people, our stories and identities are here. We belong to this place as much as this place belongs to the world and to Valentino,” he summarised.
Tune in to the livestream of the Valentino haute couture fall/winter 2022-2023 collection, live from the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, on 9 July, at 2am Singapore time, below.