Valentino to Stage Next Couture Show at Château de Chantilly
MILAN — Valentino seems to a have a penchant for the roving show format.
The Roman house said its next couture show for the fall 2023 season will be staged at the Château de Chantilly, a historic 14th-century estate located in the namesake town, 30 miles north of Paris.
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The runway event will take place on July 5 at 7.30 p.m. CET amid Paris Couture Week, which is slated for July 3 to 6. The off-site event is to be part of the official couture calendar, which has yet to be released.
The opulence of the location — replete with a hallway maze, lavish party salons, Renaissance-era paintings and jewelry — could be a hint of creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli’s direction for the collection.
The château comprises two adjoining buildings including the Petit Château, built around 1560 for Anne de Montmorency, and the Grand Château, which was destroyed during the French Revolution and rebuilt in the 1870s. It is surrounded by lush French-style gardens featuring extensive parterres, water features, pavilions and even a waterfall.
The estate is owned by the Institut de France and is open to the public.
As reported last week, Valentino revealed it is breaking away from the coed format of the past three years and will stage a dedicated men’s fashion show kicking off Milan Men’s Fashion Week on June 16.
Although Valentino has traditionally presented its couture collections in Paris, it also embraced several destinations across the seasons — including some further away from Paris.
Last summer Valentino’s “The Beginning” couture show for fall 2022 was held in Rome between Piazza Mignanelli, home to the company’s storied headquarters, and the nearby Spanish Steps. The Roman landmark at sunset provided a cinematic backdrop for Piccioli’s wondrous and dreamy couture designs sported by a diverse cast of models to a performance by Labrinth.
In July 2021, the “Valentino Des Ateliers” fall 2021 couture show was held in Venice at the Gaggiandre at the Arsenale in Venice and before that, restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic drove Piccioli to hold Valentino’s fall 2020 couture show, “Of Grace and Light,” in July that year at the Cinecittà studios outside Rome in front of a very small group of journalists.
In January 2021, as Italy faced a new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the spring couture show was unveiled digitally, and called “Code Temporal.” It consisted of a presentation conceived by the designer in a dialogue with British artist, musician, singer and songwriter Robert Del Naja, also known as 3D, and a founding member of the band Massive Attack. Piccioli selected the 14th-century Palazzo Colonna in Rome to stage the show.
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