Ended soon
Standing ovations are not given lightly in fashion. In fact, over the decade I’ve gone to the shows – the exact number of years Pierpaolo Piccioli has served as creative director for Valentino – I have never seen an entire room stand for a designer the way we did on Sunday evening at Les Invalides. It’s an occurrence you can only hope translates to pictures and videos: dresses so simple in essence, yet so breath-taking in stature. It was fifteen minutes that felt totally right, not because everything was perfect, but because it was real, and because something real could make you feel that way. “I think today, real freedom is to be whoever you want to be, wherever you are. You don’t need to escape. I don’t like escape,” Piccioli said in a preview. His creations came out in swift procession, on casual flat sandals and espadrilles plumed majestically in ostrich, one silhouette more powerful than the other. “I’m not looking for big efforts on the runway. I think it’s a moment now when you have to show real fashion,” he noted. His collection had all the expertise, volume and glamour of those recent Valentino haute couture shows – so intoxicating they have given new life to the old institution across the fashion map – but expressed in a ready-to-wear ease that is anything but easy to conceive. 
