VALENTINO’s Pierpaolo Piccioli understands haute couture – this is a known fact. On 24th January, Piccioli’s Le Salon couture collection greeted guests at Place Vendôme with a wardrobe of grandeur, imagination and heritage.
The spring-summer 2024 Haute Couture collection was an invitation to tradition, asking it to enter into a harmonious relationship with the now, the contemporary, the abstract sensuality of the modern world.
With every new look, Piccioli pushed the beauty of juxtapositions further through explosions of colour, varying volumes, and a continuous fusion of pragmatism and fantasy.
Single-pleated trousers walked in colours of hot pink and blood orange, while a voluminous ruffled dress in sea green was paired with mustard blazer – each garment bold and rich in colour.
Le Salon signified the beauty that can occur when masterful technique is met with a desire for playfulness. The collection’s motif of contrast meant utility married glamour, enabling technique to transcend into expression.
Rouleaux of silk organza and hand-cut sequins invented an illusion of exotic skins, fur, and feathers, as Piccioli replicated the spirit of the natural world through the art of humanity. In an age of the artificial, Valentino brought us back down to earth – but let us keep dreaming.
Le Salon recognised our obsession with ephemerality, and instead of rejecting this, showed us how bringing together the rich history of haute couture and a radical modernity can craft a graceful timelessness.
A standout look included a burgundy dress, sheer from the neck to just below the hips, where the dropped waist descended into feathers. Sensuality led as another model walked head-to-toe in sheer black, embellished with intricacies only the perfectionism of the Valentino atelier could create.
Jewellery was twisted into infinite ribbons of gold around the body, and where one garment flowed into the room, another shimmered, as the collection effortlessly expressed the joy and complexity of creation.
Valentino’s famous red burst to life in a cape of roses, layered over aquamarine trousers, encouraging us to both recollect and recontextualise the memory and modern reality of the House.
Under Piccioli’s vision, guests entered a space of exploration, wonder, and intimacy. Haute couture allows designers the chance to reset the very nature of creative detail, and just as is the genius of couture, is the genius of Valentino, who endlessly valorises the craft of clothing.
by Madeleine Ringer