Valentino at Pitti: Color Blocking and Camouflage
That tired old argument that you can never really invent anything terribly new in men's fashion died a dramatic death in the latest menswear collection from the house of Valentino, in what ultimately turned out to be an important statement about modern chic and fine dressing.
Since taking over the creative reins a half decade ago, Valentino's design duo of Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli have had the guts to created highly experimental menswear fashion, and this spring 2013 collection would be no exception.
In terms of form, silhouette, materials and sartorial skills, Chiuri and Piccioli really went for it in this show, staged with elegiac glory in the Limonaio di Zanobi del Rosso, a lemon tree glasshouse in Florence's justly famous Boboli Gardens on the evening of Wednesday, June 20.
The opening was all about color blocking and fabric complementarity - bowling jackets and trucker's jackets in panels of Japanese denim, heat-bonded wool, leather trim and treated linens. Made in great mixes of rust, Prussian gray, ecru and burnt orange, the look was edgy yet classy. All of the outfits were anchored by sneakers composed of exactly the same colors; the same hues also used in sleek new iPad cases and natty weekend totes.
For next spring, the Valentino man will also evoke a neo romantic high-tech mood, best symbolized by the remarkable puff-sleeved sweat shirts, which looked molded in a laboratory, or by the sleek surgeon's smocks made in gentlemanly white cotton and finished with classic little collars.
The designers also dipped back into Valentino's own history with a series of camouflage creations, most spectacularly a painterly and voluminous trench coat and very cool nylon jogging pants for a lazy weekend. Though this elegant Roman brand seems light years removed from the military fabric, in actual fact founder Valentino Garavani himself used camouflage in an early 90s haute couture collection staged in Paris.
Before an audience of some 600 guests at Pitti - the Florentine menswear season that is men's fashion's greatest salon - the show climaxed with a quartet of superb high-tech tuxedo looks, each suit completed with the futurist sneakers. Call in a triumph of tuxedo sport.
