Valentino’s Grassroots Impulse (That is, Château Grass Clipped in Perpetuity)
Pierpaolo Piccioli and a new age of haute couture
Carting couture into the Parisian countryside, Valentino conducted its Fall/Winter 2023-24 “Un Château” show on the grounds of the magnificent Château de Chantilly. Creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli intended for the concept a meeting of opposites: the natural and the manicured, the simple and the opulent. He maintains that any space and its past can be “recontextualized,” including, apparently, the palatial homes in which reside centuries of aristocratic history. To Piccioli, an “everyplace for everyone…can become a new forum for a new equality” in the rejection of elitist histories. “Un Château” succeeds in the ethereal choice of location and in the design-balance of the clothes, but the exclusive nature of the brand obfuscates its populist appeal to an imagined everyman.
An everyman (everywoman?) such as myself must, of course, experience the show through a screen. The video opens with a wide aerial shot of the grounds, revealing speckles of a crowd. They could hardly have filled three buses if such things were not grotesque in the driveways of castles. I cannot help but think manicured an understatement for the level of preservation of the Château de Chantilly. Built in the Middle Ages, it lives in a seemingly constant state of restoration, most notably by Henri d’Orléans, the son of the last king of France. Henri amassed a sizable art collection to hang over its visitors like museum pieces. A relic of European aristocracy, the château now serves as the backdrop for Piccioli’s age of experimental design with Valentino. Now, the art hangs on beautiful bodies rather than walls.
Playing on the significance of the brand’s trademark red, Piccioli explores color as both a political and design statement. He draped every model as well as the runway itself in a single shade of bright pink in Valentino’s Fall/Winter 2022-23 Prêt-à-Porter show to “[maximize] expressive possibilities in the apparent lack of possibilities.” According to the Hollywood Reporter, in the Fall/Winter 2024 show, the new “in” color was black. With black as the “uniform of democracy,” Piccioli proclaimed the exhibition his way of “shaping this reactionary period we are living in.” Following these two distinctly color-statement shows, “Un Château” stands out for its bursts of different hues. Each color shines separately, appearing in successive sets, from white pieces to royal blue, pink, red, green, and lavender. Monochromatic sets interweave with floral designs and a mixing of different textures. Here, opposites play in equal standing, and Piccioli challenges the mold of previous shows.
Launching the show, Kaia Gerber descends a stone staircase beneath Anne de Montmorency, a French warrior and statesman memorialized in bronze (Figure 1). Gerber exhibits an open white blouse and casual, loose denim. The entrance feels distinctly Bond girl with her elegant, outside-of-time star power. Huge diamond earrings, visible enough in the long camera lens, dangle in tiers down to her chest and dominate the outfit. Piccioli uses statement pieces like these throughout the show to complement more monochromatic, draping clothing. Gold, diamonds, and silver accessories line the catwalk to represent his notion of “opulent detail.”
Not long after Gerber, another model bounces across the path in a white peacock-style feather crown (Figure 2). Dozens of pale feathers fan around her head like the golden plumes descending upon Bernini’s Saint Teresa. As she walks, the wires spring up and down in such a way that they look like wings, and I think to myself any second now she may take flight. Later, another model’s face peeps out from under a sleek dress fashioned at the top in the shape of a pink flower (Figure 3). The natural imagery becomes at once manicured and unnatural when strapped upon the skulls of women, but the opulence of the feathers and flower folds tastefully complement each model’s simple dress. Piccioli’s delicate craftsmanship shines through in his experimentation with texture, form, and color.
Peculiarly, not a single high heel touches the runway throughout the entire exhibition. Each model merely dons different colors of the same bow-laden flats, walking leisurely across the grounds. The timbre of an operatic singer lights the background of the production. Valentino links the soundtrack to its Spotify, where seven songs by the group formerly known as Antony and the Johnsons appear. According to the publication them, their name pays homage to Marsha B. Johnson, a trans rights activist of the late 20th century, so even the show’s music possesses Piccioli’s attention to detail and activist impulse. Each model’s natural ‘no makeup’ makeup also allows the clothes to stand for themselves. The makeup, music, and footwear each contribute to the calm and effortlessly elegant atmosphere that permeates the show.
In addition to its technical beauty, “Un Château” should mark a departure from the past, or from emblems of “elitism.” However, Piccioli chose to stage it not in a public forum but on the grounds of a massive, opulent fossil of aristocracy. This, he fills with supermodels who hardly embody the everyman in an everyplace, so…do the attendants? The “spotted at the show” slideshow splashed across Valentino’s “Un Château” page suggests not. In the first photograph, Florence Pugh gazes toward the camera in a sheer, wispy lavender Valentino gown. Click – click. Emma Chamberlain. Son Ye-jin. The page fills with designer-clad big names. So big, in fact, that the names do not even appear beside their bearers. Only those “in” understand who’s who and why it matters.
“Un Château” engages off the runway as a symbol of the people-at-large and on the runway as a symbol of the select few. I mean, how many times a day do you hear the word “château”? It smacks of the unattainable in a way not so easily recalibrated in the public imagination. Valentino frames the show in the language of egalitarianism while wrapping it in the bow of exclusivity. The brand is, after all, predicated on the allure of the exclusive. Sex sells because the unattainability of a sexy woman excites. Luxury sells for much the same reason, a reason, thus, threatened by words like “everyplace” and everyman. In true Icarian style, Piccioli pins feathers to his models and refuses to “fly midway” by instead fusing extremes together: past and present, simple and opulent, inclusive and exclusive. Under the blanket of a Parisian countryside sky, the sun softens and scorches one or the other.
As his tenure with Valentino comes to an end, Piccioli’s legacy spans both design and theory. Within the constraints of a luxury fashion house and the privileged ownership of its products, his deeply humanist approach to style still manages to spotlight the body underneath the clothes. However, he puts together two pieces from two entirely different puzzles in merging a near-Marxist fascination with alienation from production with the vision of a $1.5 billion dollar company.