Piccioli leaves Valentino and raises questions about humanity in fashion

Since news broke that Valentino designer Pierpaolo Piccioli was leaving the brand last week, tributes to his talent have been pouring in on social and fashion media. But of All the words used to describe the work of Mr. Picciolis, his genius, his magic and his vision, his dreaminess and his beauty, the one that strikes me the most is the humanity.

Not because of the looming threat of AI, and whatever that means when it comes to clothing, but because Mr. Piccioli is not the only designer to have left fashion in the past six months including humanity was part of his calling card. In fact, he is the third.

The first was Sarah Burton, the creator of Alexander McQueen. Ms. Burton left the brand in October, 13 years after taking the reins as creative director following the death of its founder and more than 20 years after joining Mr. McQueen as an assistant.

The runner-up was Dries Van Noten, who announced his retirement after 40 years in the business just days before Valentino's announcement. And now Mr. Piccioli, who worked at Valentino for 25 years, eight of them as sole creative director.

It is of course possible to see this as a coincidence. Fashion is going through a period of uncertainty due to broader political and economic forces, following a period of relative stability (at least in terms of personnel), and insecurity can breed a desire for change. It's also possible that this change is simply a generational passing of the torch. Mr. Van Noten is 65 years old; Mr. Piccioli, 56 years old; Ms. Burton was 49 when she left McQueen. It is rare for designers to stay with a brand for more than a decade unless they own it, as Mr. Van Noten did until 2018, when he sold a stake majority in the Spanish group Puig.

Yet according to the rules of fashion, three makes a trend, and Mr. Piccioli, Mr. Van Noten and Ms. Burton were otherwise not really similar, either in substance or aesthetic. So what exactly does it mean that three designers best known for their humanity are no longer in fashion?

What does humanity mean in this context?

It's a strange thing to call special in an industry in which products are (at least in theory) made by humans, for humans, but think of it as a kind of fashion version of Renaissance humanism . A brand marked by a certain generosity of spirit that permeates everything these designers do, from the clothes they design to the way they conduct business; the feeling that they cared not only about what they were making, but also about the inner emotional lives of the people who wore it. And those who contributed to its realization. That they understood that they stood on the shoulders of the giants who had gone before them and the many who made their work possible. That they had a responsibility towards them.

Mrs. Burton, for example, confronted McQueen in a time of extreme trauma, when conventional wisdom said the house should close; that no one could put themselves in Mr. McQueen's shoes and no one should even try.

She not only held the workshop and staff together, but also continued Mr. McQueen's legacy of extraordinary creativity and boundless imagination, and injected a note of gentleness and grace, tempering fury with kindness. She collaborated with mills and artisans across the UK, using her show notes to give them credit. She also showcased a whole range of bodies on her runway long before size inclusiveness became a fashion issue.

Not to mention becoming, effectively, the closest thing to an in-house couturier that Catherine, Princess of Wales, has had. Mrs. Burton made not only her wedding dress but, more recently, her coronation dress and that of her daughter, Princess Charlotte, helping to give a modern expression to the historic pageantry.

When Mr. Van Noten was treated to a retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2014, he used the opportunity not to create a celebration of himself but rather to share the spotlight with the people and works who had inspired him, particularly the Indian embroiderers with whom he had worked for decades. Similarly, for his 100th show in 2017, rather than throwing a big party in his honor, he used his budget to bring in various models who had walked in his shows so they could share in the moment. When he sold his brand to Puig in 2018, he said it was as much to ensure the continued employment of everyone who worked there as it was to create a retirement fund.

And Mr. Piccioli has made it a tradition to bring his couture atelier to the catwalk with him to take a bow after each show. He named his couture dresses after the women and men who made them (and sometimes gave these women and men the means to name them in turn). In 2019, he reimagined Cecil Beaton's famous photograph of society women in Charles James ballgowns with only black models and made it the basis of his show.

In 2022, when he unveiled his couture in the Spanish Steps, worn smooth over the centuries and notoriously slippery, he offered each model a choice between flats, platforms and heels. He eschewed diversity, which he saw as an industry buzzword, in favor of individuality.

It's not that Mr. Piccioli and company didn't believe in the financial results. But they believed that business, beauty, creativity, and functionality were of equal value and could coexist, and they infused everything they did with that belief system. It's weird to say that you can see it in a skirt, but you could in the generosity of the folds, the ease of access. In a world that loves a dictator, self-care and customer autonomy was part of what they were selling.

Whether they were ultimately fired or simply agreed to disagree with their employers (and at least in Mr. Van Notens' case, he appears to have been planning his departure for a while), the force is to note that each of these designers felt that the fashion trends were not going their way. Emotion and sentimentality are out; cool and memorable is required. Rather than compromise, they left. Everything will be fine for them.

But they leave a hole behind them. Monday Mr. Piccioli posted a farewell photo of his team, all dressed in black T-shirts with Thank you PP written on them and gathered under a sign with a quote from Pasolini that said (in Italian): “We don’t want to be so suddenly without dreams.”