The Solo Artist

With an exuberant spring collection, Pierpaolo Piccioli is setting his own vision for Valentino.

- Lauren McCarthy

A conversation with Pierpaolo Piccioli is not unlike a crash course in the history of Western civilization. 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 Spring 2017, Piccioli began anew, fine-tuning a fresh vision for the historic house that was strictly his.