Pierpaolo Piccioli Takes an Artful Approach to Cutouts for Valentino Spring 2024

Ana Colón

October 1, 2023 at 4:38 PM·6 min read

<p>Photo: Jacopo Raule/Getty Images</p> — Photo: Jacopo Raule/Getty Images

Oops!
Something went wrong.
Please try again later.

Over the years, Pierpaolo Piccioli's collections for Valentino have largely been defined by color — his bold, punchy, unapologetic use of it, as well as his ability to establish a stand-out shade that'll maintain a grip over fashion for years to come. (We're still feeling the vestiges of Pink PP.) But he's making a concerted effort to push against what has become a sort of expectation: His Fall 2023 collection for the Italian fashion house was dubbed "Valentino Black Tie," and comprised largely of black and white, for one. Spring 2024 is a continuation of this push to bring the attention back to the construction of the clothes and Piccioli's understanding of silhouette, in an effort to celebrate the body.

Titled "L'Ecole" and shown at the Beaux-arts de Paris school on the Left Bank, Valentino's latest collection sets out to reframe the female form through a feminist lens, in a way that centers an individual's power, agency and comfort, according to the show notes. (To underscore this, the brand brought FKA Twigs and a group of dancers to perform a corporeal choreography as models walked out.)

Spring 2024 opens with a suite of white looks that act almost as a clean slate, grounding the audience and setting the foundation for something a little different. Through abbreviated hemlines and artful cutouts that are more reminiscent of the art you'd make in grade school (where you'd cut up a folded-up piece of paper to create an abstract pattern) than skin-baring club clothes, Piccioli proposes a sort of controlled exposure, where the body is revealed in a way that's measured, stylized, intentional.

"Fashion is made to clothe the body, yet here it enters into a rapport," the show notes read, "an essential exchange between the garment and the woman within, aiming to transform our perceptions of the nude."

In addition to the artful cutouts, Valentino introduces a new technique dubbed "altorilievo," or high relief. Per the brand, it "sculpts fabric into apparently seamless three-dimensions, creating naturalistic forms — Baroque foliage, fruit flowers and animals — that frame the naked body, our natural state." The result is "more naked than clothed," in a way where the person who wears it "becomes an active participant in its design." Piccioli's concerned not just with how the customer will interact with the clothes, then, but also how his designs will interact with them. In this equation, he centers not just the customer's preferences, but their agency when it comes to what they wear.

Another headline from the Spring 2024 show is the big push for the VLogo Moon bag. (It even got its own hashtag for the event.) The crescent style marries "day" and "night" attributes, such as spacious shape and materiality with a metal chain that can wrap around the wrist like a bracelet. The brand highlights the latter quality, as it connects back to the idea that the person wearing the pieces is an active participant in them: It "molds itself to the form of the body," while the strap fuses "woman and garment" when styled like jewelry, per the show notes.

Valentino's latest is all about putting the person wearing the clothes first. The silhouettes are sharp but considered, never restrictive or unrealistic. (Many times you look at a runway, and think: Who would wear that? Where would they wear it to?) Even the footwear puts practicality at the forefront, with a big investment in flats. (Time to put those platforms away...) The fabrics look soft and breezy, like something you'd want to wrap yourself in. The brand put it best: It's all about "comfort in one's own skin."

See the full Valentino Spring 2024 collection below.