The Solo Artist

After the departure of longtime design partner Maria Grazia Chiuri for Dior, PierPaolo Piccioli draws on his creative reserves to craft a personal new vision for Valentino.

- Lauren Mccarthy

A CONVERSATION WITH PIERPAOLO PICCIOLI is not unlike a crash course in the history of Western civilisation. For the duration of the discussion, the Valentino designer moves in rapid succession, touching on a wide array of subjects, from Nietzsche and Zandra Rhodes, the pink-haired British fashion designer of the ’70s, to humanism and Hieronymus Bosch’s 15th-century sin-obsessed triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights. The common thread in this particular discourse: all informed the house’s outstanding spring collection, Piccioli’s first as sole creative director since his partner, Maria Grazia Chiuri, left in July to become the artistic director of Dior.

“The moment I was starting the collection was a moment of change,” Piccioli says. “I thought back to [cultural periods] of change: the end of the Middle Ages, the beginning of the Renaissance, and even the time between the late 1970s and early ’80s.” Chiuri’s departure marked the close of one of the modern era’s longest and most successful design partnerships, spanning three decades; the duo had been together at Fendi for a decade before working side by side at Valentino for 17 years. With S/S 2017, Piccioli began anew, fine-tuning a fresh vision for the historic house that was strictly his.