Valentino Fall Winter 2023-2024 “Black Tie”. Story by RUNWAY MAGAZINE. Photo Courtesy: Valentino.
An instruction can become an invitation, a dress code can liberate, limitation can free. Equally, universal symbolism can be open to reinterpretations, redefinition. Archetypes can be re-imagined, and a power in the familiar can come from its rediscovery in a new context.
A romantic, decontextualized accessory becomes a recurring theme on every look. For Valentino, Pierpaolo Piccioli envisions the tie as a powerful tool, imbuing it with aesthetic freedom and redefining its role as part of a prescriptive dress code.
He takes black tie at face value, a figure of speech for a collection that builds around pieces drawn from every day. Conjecture and cultural capital are inverted – a symbol of masculine power, an emblem of orthodoxy and restriction, our preconceptions of the tie become theoretical architecture for a collection that toys with rules, emancipating meaning. Its ideological conceit is challenged, ultimately contradicted and redefined entirely.
See all looks Valentino Fall Winter 2023-2024
