Valentino’s Roman Marvels

ROME — The couture exhibits got here to an finish not in Paris however in Rome, with a river of gold ballroom chairs connecting the Piazza di Spagna on the foot of the Spanish Steps — probably the most well-known people-watching and -posing staircase in Europe — to Piazza Mignanelli, the place the Valentino headquarters stand.

Twenty-three years after he joined the model within the purse division, Pierpaolo Piccioli, now Valentino’s artistic director, needed to deliver his assortment dwelling to the place it started, to supply one thing of a treatise about historical past, humanity and what occurs subsequent. That it got here within the type of garments merely raised the stakes.

“For me, greater than ever, magnificence is an influence,” he had mentioned a couple of days earlier than, throughout a preview in his Paris atelier. “I don’t wish to mirror the ugliness of a world the place democracy is denied.” His job, he mentioned, was to current an alternate.

However you already know: Don’t inform, present. So he did.

In a Rome nearing sundown, visitors well-known and in any other case milled round their seats taking selfies in a rainbow of Valentino plumage. Anne Hathaway tottered by in a fuchsia sequined minidress and towering platforms from the newest ready-to-wear assortment. Andrew Garfield was in a symphony of blue. One lady wore the lime inexperienced model that Melania Trump had worn to the ultimate night of the Republican Nationwide Conference in 2020. On the prime of the steps, the Trinità dei Monti church virtually glowed within the final of the night mild. Across the sq., neighbors frolicked of their home windows to see what was occurring.

Then the fashions started to descend, greater than 100 of them, strolling down the numerous steps worn easy after almost three centuries by the legions who got here earlier than. Mr. Piccioli had conceived of the gathering as a dialog between himself and Valentino Garavani, the founding father of the model (who retired in 2008 and who, at 90 years previous, didn’t attend the present), informed within the language of aesthetics.

The roses that had been one in every of Valentino’s signatures had been there, however this time whorled right into a three-dimensional puffball atop a sequined quick jumpsuit. Ditto the ruffles, which, in Mr. Piccioli’s palms, appeared extra like undulating waves, shifting within the air. And the crimson that has been synonymous with the home — although Mr. Piccioli has expanded the palette to an eye-boggling excessive, so plum is teamed with chartreuse and white, amethyst with cherry and smoky quartz, a slithery column of silver with a splash of periwinkle.

Certainly, what this present made clear is simply how expansive his Valentino has turn into: expansive in concepts and emotion; embracing all types of age, dimension and shade; way back tossing gender distinctions and just about all types of rigidity out the window. There’s nothing jaded or cynical about it.

One sweeping oatmeal-tone night coat, with a constellation of sparkles and the heft of royalty, was thrown over velvet drawstring shorts and a tank prime embroidered with crystals. A costume solely encrusted in beading was lower like a T-shirt. Big ruffled skirts had been paired with little cropped tops. Taffeta capes with Medici-sized puffed sleeves shrugged on like denim jackets: Oh, this previous factor?

It isn’t immaterial that earlier than the present Mr. Piccioli provided his fashions a selection of footwear — flats, kitten heels or stilettos tied on the ankle with a large bow — as a result of, he mentioned, he realized the slippery travertine steps had been fairly scary. Or that he invited greater than 100 vogue college students to attend. Or that, on the finish, when all of the fashions had been arrayed on the steps in a lush bouquet of feathers, taffeta and chiffon, he introduced out his complete group of petites mains to take a bow.

As soon as, couture was a closed world, seen to solely the only a few with the cash and connections to entry it. However this was a narrative informed in a public place, with pictures made to resonate far past. As such, it was a stunning reminder, in an authoritarian time when everyone is more and more hunkered down of their bunkers and their echo chambers, that generosity is a superpower all its personal.