Valentino's return to Milan Pierpaolo Piccioli and the re-signification of brand identity

Valentino's latest show for the brand's SS21 collection has been striking on several levels. From a purely historical point of view, it represented the great return to Italy of a brand that for many years decided to show in Paris – a gesture of support to the Italian fashion world that, this year, has had to deal with many upheavals due to the pandemic and lockdown. From a deeper point of view, however, the show was as much a statement of the new ethical and aesthetic values that Pierpaolo Piccioli has imprinted on his brand, as a symbolic show in which the art direction, the set design and the looks have found an ideal and very balanced synthesis – although never coming out of the groove traced for the brand by Piccioli in recent years. This change has been based on two fundamental points: the return to nature and the re-signification.

The desire to equip the brand with new meanings therefore moves in sync with the desire to represent more closely the singular identities that Valentino can share, as well as the desire to tend an ear towards the changes of the world – offering a simplicity, a serenity of judgment and a type of emotionality that, starting from the very core of the brand's identity , are manifested through its designs and its entire world of aesthetic references.