Review of Valentino Fall 2023 Couture Fashion Show
Color and Shine
By Mark Wittmer
Staged among the prim courtyard of the historic Château de Chantilly just north of Paris, Valentino’s Fall 2023 haute couture runway show served up a spectacle worthy of its setting.
After a few seasons of thematic collections, Pierpaolo Piccioli returned to his simple, airy, and delicate vision of contemporary elegance.
The show asked a lot of its viewers: it was a huge runway with what felt like a hundred looks, their wearers walking slowly in time with a melodramatic soundtrack that was a bit snooze-inducing.
But for those of us who managed to stay awake and endure, there were many rewarding moments. Though the atelier’s talents are on full display (especially when it comes to the jewelry), looks fuss less with intricate craft details than in previous seasons and instead tend to make their impact through volume and color.
While Pierpaolo Piccioli definitely has a very recognizable design language, Valentino’s identity as a brand feels less strong and distinct. Especially at a time when couture collections don’t make money and instead function more like advertisements, drawing viewers into the world of the brand and directing them to bags, shoes, and fragrance, through which the brand actually makes money, maybe couture shows should make more of a statement than “these clothes are beautiful?”
On a teaser post on its Instagram, the brand wrote that through the show, “A Château – the longtime symbol of exclusivity – is transformed into a place of uniqueness, freedom and exchange.” Really? Where? Haute couture is about as exclusive as it gets, and there’s nothing going on here that subverts that exclusivity.
And that’s ok; making beautiful clothing is a worthwhile goal in itself. But something about the collection, especially when coupled with its supposed, unrealized goal of reclaiming a realm of exclusivity, has that classic couture feeling of waking up from a beautiful dream and realizing it makes no sense and can teach you nothing now that you’re awake and in the real world.
Valentino’s couture collections present a beautiful, unattainable fantasy, and everything about this show worked to make it one of the most beautiful and unattainable yet.
