Amidst a colourful Paris Fashion Week, Valentino stood out.
The collection was called Le Noir, which means black in French. It saw creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli well and truly prove you do not need vibrant colours on the runway to present an interesting collection.
The autumn/winter 2024 show opened with a mini dress that had Eighties-inspired power shoulders – a trend that has come up time and time again this season, also seen at the Alexander McQueen and Saint Laurent shows.
Chiffon billowed down the runway as models walked, contrasting with feathered skirts, leather gloves and sequinned jackets.
Even the beauty look played into the theme of making black exciting, with some models sporting ultra-shiny black lips, and others wearing inverse cat-eye make-up.
This was not just any shade of pink – it was a specific shade Piccioli came up with in collaboration with Pantone, called Valentino Pink PP. It started flooding the red carpets, becoming a Valentino signature, and it seems Piccioli is keen to once again change things up.
Discussing his obsession with monochrome colours back in 2022, he told AnOther Magazine: “Monochrome artists used to paint everything in one colour in order to give visibility to other things. To deliver different things, different emotions.
It’s true – the all-black collection had you straining to see the small details of the ensembles, of which there were many.
According to Valentino, “Black is a colour not of sobriety but of exuberance, a shade that offers a rebellion to romance.”
This romantic element was mirrored in the show’s location, an 18th-century mansion in Paris called the Hotel de Maisons.
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Model and beauty founder Rosie Huntington-Whiteley played around with muted tones, wearing a grey two-piece with plenty of gold jewellery.