While his competition travels the globe for ever-more exotic pre-fall and cruise locations, Pierpaolo Piccioli is taking a different tack entirely. He has identified New York as Valentino’s second home away from home, after Paris, where the Rome-based house has long shown its couture and primary ready-to-wear collections.
For Piccioli, New York epitomizes cultural diversity at its most expansive and genuine, a concept he wants to capture, particularly in his pre-collections. Yet the collection Piccioli showed on Tuesday morning proved more than a sartorial civics class. It was a compelling ode to casual urbanity — chic, smart and glamorous in the most unfettered sense. As such, it offered a powerful statement of Piccioli’s intention to build the daywear side of the Valentino repertoire in a manner more pragmatic than that which meshes so seamlessly with the lyrical gowns he presents in March and October.
Yes, this collection has some pan-cultural currents, mostly in embroideries and knits that looked non-specifically tribal. But Piccioli’s primary point was to tackle head-on that which has become one of luxury’s greatest challenges: its customers’ increasingly casual lifestyles. He did so in a powerful street-sport-Valentino fusion. No easy trick, especially given the baseline of his work for the house:
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