DREAM MAKER

Kenneth Goh speaks to creative director of Maison Valentino, Pierpaolo Piccioli, in Rome after the Autumn/Winter 2022 haute couture show where he brought a sense of community, inclusivity and ultimately, beauty, to the world right in the heart of the Eternal City.

It’s the day after Valentino’s incredible Autumn/Winter 2022 haute couture show. Having taken place at Rome’s famous Spanish Steps, it was one of creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli’s most extravagant presentations for a House that he’s been working with for over 23 years. After an exquisite Japanese lunch at Zuma, I’m walking down Via dei Condotti, to the Valentino headquarters located not too far away, for my interview with Piccioli.

The 40-degree summer heat is sweltering and the street is completely packed with gelato-consuming tourists. The mile-long runway from the night before—which cascaded down the Spanish Steps onto a street lined with rows of seats for guests—has already been dismantled, the barricades broken down, so that everyone is able to take their obligatory shots of the famous 174-step structure, with the majestic Santissima Trinità dei Monti church perched at the top, outlined against clear, blue skies.

I am very excited to meet Piccioli—especially after having come off such an emotional high from the night before; and at Piazza di Spagna, the very place where the Maison started its journey, no less. Justifiably called “The Beginning”, the collection reflects Piccioli’s "hope, freedom and promise" and a deeply personal sentiment about how it is a conversation with Valentino; of "how much of him is in me and how much I returned", as the show notes read. The exchange, we learn, is "imagined and real, around shapes, proportions, colours". And what manifested on the runway was over 100 looks that traversed time, space, colour, size, gender and age.