The Roman house of Valentino opened the menswear runway season in Milan on a sunny Friday with a gently gentlemanly fashion statement in the city’s most famous university.
Staged inside the garden of the cloisters of the Università degli Studi di Milano, the show was serenaded by a great performance from singer d4vd, a truly lusty display supported by driving base and drums.
Pre-show there had been huge squeals from hundreds of fans every time one of a dozen Thai singers or K Pop stars marched into the college. The show felt a lot more grown up.
Before a front row crammed of Asian stars, including Japanese models Shuzo and Yamato, Valentino’s Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli sent out a great wardrobe, a timeless style, artfully modernized by rich techy fabrics and a sense of subtle color for spring-summer 2024.
Inevitably there was dashes of vibrant bubble gum pink, but also soft copper, black as a starless night black, dazzling fuchsia and putty gray. Though the show’s highlight was very much the blown-up prints where orchid’s petals and labellum became one-foot-wide images on jackets, and peonies bloomed on shirt jackets.
“Transformed contexts can shift perception so tailoring, once emblematic of power and success, can now be worn by a new generation as an expression of individuality,” opined Piccioli in his program notes.
Often he included elements of couture – ecru blazers or elongated French blue work jackets embroidered with fabric flowers, giant dusters made in denim leather, or a stunning trench meets dressing gown with one white rose and a meter and a half long stem skillfully sewn from lapel to hem.
Entitled Narratives, the show included multiple looks bearing pull quotes from the novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, the editor-in-chief of the New York Times’ T magazine.
“We are so old, we have become young again,” was printed on very wide denim jeans, embossed crisp white poplin shirts and even written on natty classic blazers.
Copies of the novel was left in many editors’ hotel rooms. Little wonder La Yanagihara, as the Italians call her, beamed in the front-row.
All building to a climax at the finale, when d4vd – or to give him his full name, David Anthony Burke – delivered a great version of The Smiths classic There is a Light That Never Goes Out.
A generous song for a generous house and designer, which made a significant donation to the Università degli Studi, one of Italy’s most renowned learning centers.
“To support young thinkers, the donation is allocated to the Diritto Allo Studio for the next academic year – supporting scholarships, helping to invest in educational pathways and local communities. This Maison support for students is part of an ongoing story with the new generation,” Valentino explained in a release.
Continuing a project which it began with its couture show The Beginning in Rome, where the brand invested in a city-center green space, Valentino will reuse many materials from this all-white catwalk set-up and invest in an eco-space in central Milan.
Continuing the narrative well past this distinguished show and fashion statement.
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