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 colour 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 colours, 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.
The name of the project, Valentino Des Ateliers, contains its salient features: the dynamism of conversation, the multiplicity of teamwork, always taking the side of talent.
The collection is presented at the Venice Biennale, in the absolute and natural space of the Gaggiandre, where Vuslat Foundation commissioned the installation of "Idee di pietra – Olmo", 2008 (bronze, river stone, water); Curated by Chus Martinez, Special Event at the La Biennale di Architettura 2021, emerging from the lagoon observing the catwalk along which the clothes will be presented.
