On July 21st, Pierpaolo Piccioli presented the Valentino fall 2020 couture collection, a deeply apropos finale to an oddly fitful season. Working with photographer Nick Knight at the famed Cinecittà Studios in Rome, Piccioli presented his collection in two acts entitled “Of Grace and Light.” Keep reading – this is a goodie, I promise. Complex and somehow so simple, gorgeous and heartbreaking, cerebral and earthy – this show has all the hallmarks of genius.
Projection
The first, a masterfully glitched film of models in Piccioli’s monumental creations, some standing on pillars, others sitting in trapezes, all in white or silver gowns that swept the floor despite their great altitude. The music – surreal, dreamy, intense – was magnified by stunning footage of the natural world projected in snippets onto the gowns themselves. Pixelated images interrupted those brief, gentle projections, a reminder that we live now more than ever at a tenuous intersection of digital and analogue realities. Nature and peace are at once isolated by and made more relevant because of these digital interruptions.
There’s a poignancy in the choice to project the natural world – clouds, flowers, birds’ wings – onto garments made by human hands. These images evoke escape through flight (not unimportant, given the models’ distance from the ground), beauty through regeneration, and peace in nature. It hammers home our desire to connect with the earth at a time when human contact is so limited, and our minds spin and seek solace in the simplest of things.
Simplicity and reality in equal measure, although the suggestion is that our brains may not understand the difference between a dream of such things and the real deal. It’s projected into a human-made space, complete with digital glitches, on human-made objects, which begs the question: is the projection enough to sate us? We live in a world seemingly stripped of vitality and color, yet our minds find ways to see beauty and to create regardless.
Are We Six Feet Apart, or Six Feet Off the Ground?
Part two of the presentation cut from the film to a live stream of models in all 16 looks on Cinecittà’s Studio 10 soundstage. The same dark backdrop and lighting persisted, this time without projection such that every gorgeous detail came into full relief. One by one, spotlights landed on each look, the all-white palette as much a side effect of not being able to collaborate on prints and embroidery as much as an indication of Piccioli’s resolute calm in the face of chaos.
The method of spotlighting each gown in isolation heightened the awareness that each model stood on her own – both high off the ground and far away from her compatriots. A void in between, each suspended in her own cloud of silk chiffon, ostrich feathers, and silver paillettes, each alone with her thoughts and imagination. A sort of suspended animation, all alone together, all isolated, all dreaming, connected by one shared imagination.
Valentino Fall 2020 Couture: An “Extreme Response”
In a Zoom press conference, Piccioli emphasized that his intention is not to reflect reality, but rather to respond to it – this being, in his words, an “extreme response” to our present condition.
His message, at least to me, was this: the most beautiful of nature’s creations, the human imagination, can save us by uniting us. Through our nature, our ability to create, to combine the digital and the analog, to meditate on beauty, to innovate, to dream with two feet on the ground, we may just find our way forward.
love,
Stig
Information via Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Maison Valentino.
Cover photo via Vogue
