It happens that, when the great couturier give way and leave their house in the hands of the designated successors, often these do not prove up to the task and what we see on the catwalk is a remembrance of blurry past glories. Maria Grazia Chiuri and Piccioli Piccioli are what is called “the exception that proves the rule”. A dream team to love, and above all in love, not only with Valentino, but with women and with fashion that every season they play in the most intelligent and sophisticated way. Eighty-four looks, no less, for a show as it used to be when fashion was really a show, where their vision has ranged in the higher realms that the discipline embraces. The start is an immersion in optical graphics black & white, where geometric silhouettes are defined by strict proportion, but at the same time softened by the impalpability of chiffon skirts, kept down by leather panels, by the softness of angora sweaters and by the movement of bell-shaped sleeves. Then a coat of fur, patchwork of colors and shapes of the past, gives way to the colors of overlapping lace, almost succulent for the tones that are played in, up to pictorial and liquid fantasies, but always with the rigor of a geometric rule and of skirts cut below the knee. Tacking towards the evening means resuming the whites and blacks, deeper this time, and then let go on exotic nights dotted with stars and moons, on a long transparent chiffon dress, Chinese dragons and flowers, colorful but from a night garden. A crescendo that, for those who love fashion, began almost to overwhelm when, deus ex machina, Derek Zoolander and Hansel, AKA Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, tore the audience of the show a big laugh. Right in Valentino HQ the two actors are shooting the sequel to the highly successful Zoolander. A brilliant touch for what was already stated anyway as memorable.
