Un Château: Valentino Fall 2023 Couture
Un Château: Valentino Fall 2023 Couture
By: Emma Greene
As the sun set over the Château de Chantilly on July 5th, Pierpaolo Piccioli revealed his most recent haute couture collection for Valentino: “Un Château.” Designed to walk the line between elaborate and simple, Piccoli curated the collection as a metaphor for “status and power” and how historical ideas of such things must be “questioned and recontextualized.”
The show was staged outside of the chateau, which lies just north of Paris. This location choice served to emphasize the show’s paradoxical nature, placing modern design in a palace of historic reverence and outside of walls that have traditionally separated couture and everyday styles.
“Un Château” received Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour’s fifth standing ovation of the past decade, the fourth of which was given to Valentino’s Fall Couture 2022 collection.
The collection featured looks ranging from relaxed to regal, putting denim and ball gowns on the same runway.
Apropos of Piccioli’s “paradox,” the collection opened with Kaia Gerber in what appeared to be Levi’s jeans and a nearly unbuttoned white button-down. The jeans, however, had been reworked. The Valentino atelier created the illusion of denim by embroidering the silk gazar trousers with pearlescent beads. The beads were dyed 80 varying shades of indigo to achieve a denim texture.
Look five also featured reworked Levi’s jeans, heightened by gold metallic embroidery, combining the everyday and grandiose.
Draped fabrics were a common theme throughout the collection. Although simple at first glance, this constructive feature is one of the most challenging to achieve. This technique and the use of larger-than-life rhinestone earrings in womenswear looks allowed continuity of the show’s theme despite the wide range of styles, colors, and textures represented.
The house’s archetypal feather details were not amiss this season, as they were most notably used in look 50 to create the appearance of ermine. Commonly worn and associated with royalty, this interpretation of its black-spotted appearance provided a strong juxtaposition to the denim represented in the show’s earlier looks.
Piccioli’s “Un Château” successfully called to question the separation of couture and casual fashion, perhaps foreshadowing the growth of harmony between the two. Valentino utilized its artistry to provide a lens into a future in which luxury transcends historic boundaries.
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To watch the full show, click here.
All photos belong to Valentino.