Pierpaolo Piccioli: “Fashion should be about inclusivity rather than exclusivity”

The fashion industry, according to Pierpaolo Piccioli, has undergone a Haussmanian-scale renovation recently, and he sees it as a wholly positive thing. Gone are the insular elite social networks dictating what will be in vogue each season—making way for open boulevards of self-expression and better representation. “It’s important today, if you are in fashion, if you have a voice—hopefully a loud voice—not to talk bullshit,” says the Valentino creative director. “To be very aware that you can use your voice for something that is not only about clothes, but the values you can deliver through your clothes.”

For Piccioli, whose proverbial voice is not only one of the loudest but the brightest in fashion right now, the most important value to deliver is one of “inclusivity rather than exclusivity”.

It’s a searing hot day in Doha, where Vogue has come to meet the 51-year-old designer. Although he’s dressed head to toe in black—with his oversized Wayfarers, one leg hugged into his chest revealing white, “PPP”-monogrammed tennis socks—Piccioli couldn’t be cooler.

His desire to make fashion more inclusive is what brings him to the Qatari capital. Alongside the likes of Victoria Beckham, Natalia Vodianova, Diane von Furstenberg and Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing, Piccioli is here to serve on the judging panel for the inaugural Fashion Trust Arabia (FTA). The initiative—aimed at raising the standards and profiles of emerging design talent in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region through mentorship and prize money of up to $200,000 tailored to each winner’s business plan—operates under the patronage of honorary chair HRH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser and co-chair HE Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, and was founded by British Vogue contributing editor Tania Fares.

At a star-studded awards ceremony on Thursday night at Doha’s Fire Station artist residency, a total of six winners were announced in five categories: Lebanese designer Krikor Jabotian (evening wear); the Mukhi Sisters, also from Lebanon (jewellery); Moroccan label Zyne (footwear); the Egyptian duo behind bag brand Sabry Marouf (accessories); and joint winners in ready-to-wear, Lebanese womenswear designer Salim Azzam and Beirut-based Roni Helou. For Piccioli, it is these last two who have really caught his eye.

Azzam employs women from the Chouf Mountains near where he grew up to turn his illustrations into delicate embroideries on crisp white cotton shirts and other staples in his collection. “Through these embroideries, he is telling his own story,” explains Piccioli. “You don’t always have to tell a big story, I think a small story is enough if it’s yours.” Helou, meanwhile, minimises his impact on the environment by making garments— oversized blanket coats and two-tone denim jeans stand out—using material sourced from markets. “He told me: ‘I don’t want to do clothes, I want to put values in my fashion,’ which I really appreciate,” says Piccioli.

Limited infrastructure in terms of production and lack of official fashion week programmes make it difficult for designers from MENA to make their voices heard. Nevertheless, there is a huge opportunity to be had—the Global Islamic Economy Report by Thomson Reuters (which evaluated a total of 73 countries), forecast that by 2021 the fashion spend by Muslims will reach $368 billion. Initiatives like FTA could help ensure more of that money is spent in the Middle East, while creating an added sense of community in a region that is home to 4.5 million people, who speak four major languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish).

As a member of the FTA jury, Piccioli sees it as his role to act as a mentor, which doesn’t mean pushing the finalists in a certain direction but rather helping them gain a stronger understanding of who they are as designers. “They need people to give them good advice,” he says. “They don’t have to follow it, but everyone deserves the opportunity to [access] it. I want to see these designers keep their identity while facing the world.”

The overnight global exposure that fashion prizes offer can be bittersweet. In order to broaden appeal, Piccioli says there is a danger of “entering a generic territory”, often manifested in two ways: “trying too hard to be cool and contemporary” or “playing it too safe and maybe becoming a bit old [fashioned]”. This comes from a designer who fervently stays true to his roots. While by day his job centres around creating dresses of breathtaking beauty that will be seen on Oscar-winning actress and world-famous models alike, at night he returns home to his wife and family in the small seaside town of Nettuno where he is originally from. “If you’re not aware of your past, how can you face your future,” he says, echoing the words of Spanish philosopher George Santayana, who went a step further, stating: “Those who forget their past are doomed to repeat it.”

This message couldn’t have been clearer in Piccioli’s SS19 Valentino haute couture show in January. Noting that couture tends to conjure images of “beauty, fantasy and magic that always belong to the past”, he set about reinterpreting these images in a more accurate vision; questioning what Cecil Beaton’s 1948 photograph of Charles James dresses could be if they were worn by black women. Piccioli’s research led him to unearth issues of Ebony and Jet magazines dating back to the 1940s and 1950s respectively. He was horrified to learn that the magazines’ co-founder Eunice W Johnson struggled to find European fashion houses that would sell clothes to a black woman for shoots, let alone loan them.

Over half of the 65 looks he presented that day—Yves Klein-blue ballgowns, rose silk capes draped into flower formations and voluminous skirts cut from olive green faille—were modelled by women of colour. Once again, the designer left the front row fighting to hold back tears, but this time it was as much for his diverse portrayal of beauty as much as the enchantment of his designs.

“Fashion is about identity. You have to talk about your own values, talk about your own aesthetic,” he says, noting that designers are often expected to be too many things at once—accountants, marketers—when they should be focusing on their creative output. “If you’re not moved by what you’re doing, then you’re doing it to please someone else. It’s not authentic and you’ll never touch emotions.” Now, in this moment, when “everything is about flat screens, perfections”, the designer adds, “all of us are looking for emotions, for dreams, for something human. You want to feel the humanity behind the clothes… you want to feel the soul.”

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