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For Fall 2015 Chiuri and Piccioli took couture home to Rome, the city where Valentino Garavani founded his house. Called Mirabilia Romae, the wonders of Rome, it marked the opening of the new Piazza di Spagna flagship and was the house’s first live-streamed couture show.
Guests spent three days in the city first, seeing archive couture in places that had inspired the designers, from the Biblioteca Casanatense to a third-century Mithraic grotto and Giorgio de Chirico’s apartment. The show itself was held at twilight in Piazza Mignanelli, outside the house’s headquarters, on a wooden Roman Forum that the artist Pietro Ruffo built in nine days. Neighbours leaned out of their windows, just as they did when Valentino showed there himself, and he watched from the front row, beaming.
The 59 looks were mostly black, with red and gold. Piccioli explained the black by calling Rome a little noir, but none of it was plain. Leather flowers climbed a sheer tulle cape, tiny beads covered a lace gladiator mini, and a long cape carried a repeating arch taken from the Colosseum. Imperial and Byzantine symbols ran through it all: an eagle holding a red ribbon on the opening dress, wheat on gold lace, a griffin on a long poncho, filigree coronets and heavy gold pendants.
The crowd gave a standing ovation, and it is still seen as a high point of the Chiuri and Piccioli years. Not every Italian critic was swept away; one dismissed it as classical poetry for the Instagram generation.
For us it is a love letter to Rome, and one of the best shows of the era.
More Valentino: see every Valentino couture collection we have reviewed, and another Roman homecoming in Valentino Couture Fall 2022.
Previous collection: Valentino Spring 2015 Couture · Next collection: Valentino Spring 2016 Couture
Pictures courtesy of Vogue Runway
We do not own the rights to any of these images and they have been used in good faith. Every effort has been made to ensure that all images are used with proper credits. If you are the rightful owner of any image used on our site and wish to have it removed, please contact us at ayerhsmagazine@gmail.com and we will promptly remove it. We are a non-commercial, passion-driven, independent fashion blog and do not intend to infringe any copyright. Thank you for your understanding.
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