Amidst a colourful Paris Fashion Week, Valentino stood out.
The Italian fashion house, which has become synonymous with a bright shade of pink over the last couple of years, instead made the bold decision to present an entirely black collection.
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 brand wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “This season, Pierpaolo reconsiders Valentino through the lens of the colour black, representing an entire spectrum of shades, infinitely nuanced, within one.”
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.
To keep the collection interesting, Piccioli played around with silhouettes and materials. Shift dresses had balloon sleeves, some models walked in rigid, Fifties-inspired skirts, and long Matrix-style coats gave a futuristic element to proceedings.
Chiffon billowed down the runway as models walked, contrasting with feathered skirts, leather gloves and sequinned jackets.
Bags are the bread and butter of the Valentino brand, and they came in all shapes and sizes this season – from small clutches to large holdalls, studded with silver hardware.
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 is not the first time Valentino has chosen an extreme approach to colour. For the label’s autumn/winter 2022 collection models wore one of two things: an eye-searingly bright shade of fuschia, or all black.
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.
“For me it’s like a black and white picture book, after a chapter, you understand. And you go deeper into surface, the hands, the expression, the emotion. So I wanted to use one colour in order to highlight the idea of fashion as cut, design, silhouette, shape, volumes. Patterns, textures. You’re obliged to see more.”
It’s true – the all-black collection had you straining to see the small details of the ensembles, of which there were many.
There were plenty of Valentino signatures, from sheer chiffon to lots of lace and rosette detailing, and some newer elements for the label, like the sculptural shapes contrasting against some of the ethereal materials.
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.
While Bridgerton star Simone Ashley was on-theme, wearing loose black shorts and a matching oversized tuxedo jacket, it was not an entirely sombre front row.
Former tennis player Serena Williams wore a plum-coloured shift dress with white bird-themed pattern and feathered cuffs.
Model and beauty founder Rosie Huntington-Whiteley played around with muted tones, wearing a grey two-piece with plenty of gold jewellery.