VALENTINO DES ATELIERS – HAUTE COUTURE AUTUMN/WINTER 2021

Fashion and art are creative practices that respond to different purposes – one linked to the body and
movement, the other completely free from constraints of sorts – which nevertheless find a conjunction in
the atelier: the place of making, of thinking with the hands, of translating a desire, an idea, a sensation into
a tangible object.

Driven by the urge to build a community of makers around Maison Valentino, convinced that painting is to
contemporary art what Haute Couture is to fashion, Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli brings a group of
painters of all ages, backgrounds, and aesthetic inclinations into the Atelier, involving them in a dialogue
that is written forever on the skin of the clothing, transmuting its surfaces, giving three-dimensionality to
what is meant to live on a two-dimensional support, animating in movement what is imagined to be observed
and contemplated as something still. Relying on the alchemical process of the Atelier work, and therefore
on the hands of other makers, focusing on listening and slowness of process, Pierpaolo Piccioli translates
the color layering, the signs, the backgrounds, the full and empty portions into lines, cuts, compositional
gestures, involving each artist in a conversation entre deux on the dress itself. The result is a collection of
dialogues in which a new identity emerges from the confrontation of two, and is captured in the dress.

This experimental and metamorphic process rhythms a collection that summarizes the Couture codes of
Valentino, from floating hats to grandiose ball gowns, loading them with vibrant colors, fluidifying them in
nonchalant draping and movement. The silhouette is long and layered, or short and sculptural. Clothes open
up possibilities, for both women and men, in which the virtuosity of the workmanship dissolves in ineffable,
effortless lightness.

Maintaining their healthy otherness, fashion and art meet in an experiment of translation, in a gesture that
expresses unity and community spirit.

#ValentinoDesAteliers
#ValentinoHauteCouture

A project by Pierpaolo Piccioli
Curated by Gianluigi Ricuperati
Together with: Joel S. Allen, Anastasia Bay, Benni Bosetto, Katrin Bremermann, Guglielmo Castelli,
Maurizio Cilli, Danilo Correale, Luca Coser, Jamie Nares, Francis Offman, Andrea Respino, Wu Rui, Sofia
Silva, Alessandro Teoldi, Patricia Treib, Malte Zenses.
And with the participation of di Kerstin Brätsch.