Fashion

Pierpaolo Piccioli on the power of human connection

By Vogue3 September 2020

As part of Vogue’s Hope series, the creative director of Valentino shares a letter on happiness, empathy and friendship

For many seasons now, Pierpaolo Piccioli has breathed a sense of hope into the fashion calendar —not least by elevating experiments with volume and silhouettes that seem to defy gravity, or his optimistic colour palette of fuchsias, tangerines and emeralds. You see, clothes for Piccioli are merely a vehicle for delivering his values; his runway shows are not a space for unveiling his latest designs, but a catalyst for establishing a more inclusive industry.

With much of the world in lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in lieu of a show, Piccioli had to find new ways of conveying his message and sustain the values he had established at Valentino. Thus the #ValentinoEmpathy campaign was born. Dressed in the house’s AW20 designs, a diverse array of international models and artists have been casted, including Adut Akech, Anwar Hadid, Christy Turlington, Gwyneth Paltrow, Janet Mock, Laetitia Casta, Laura Dern, Leon Dame, Liu Wen, Mariacarla Boscono, Mustafa the Poet, Naomi Campbell, Rossy de Palma, Rula Jebreal and Tang Yan.

All the protagonists were shot in the place where they were living, and donated their fee totalling €1m to the Italian Lazzaro Spallanzani Hospital in Rome, the Italian hub fighting against COVID-19, adding to the €4m the house and its owner, Mayhoola, had donated to hospitals throughout Europe.

As part of Vogue’s Hope series, Piccioli shares a letter on happiness, empathy and friendship

Mariacarla Boscono

Dear friends,

During the last months, what really warmed my heart was not the Mediterranean light I could enjoy from the window of my studio, but a new, intimate reason for being happy. This discovery was not a proper one, as what I understood was not new to me, but the value it brought to my experience was made priceless, unique, unforgettable by the situation we were facing.

I realised that the people I am surrounded by—my family, collaborators, friends, partners—are the best I could possibly aim for. They offered me their strength, their passion, their dedication with no hesitation, and put all their creative and emotional energies in common, sharing emotions, ideas and feelings. This became our only way out, and the most enriching experience of my life.

I wish all of us to cultivate this humanity, this interior richness, and to put it at the very first place in our everyday routine. There would be no ‘us’ without this empathy.

The experience we went through and the complexities we may have to face in the future become extremely relative and unimportant if we take consciousness of the huge power disclosed by human connection.

Let’s direct this energy towards positive and joyful experiments. Let’s keep on dreaming, together.

Love,