Valentino couture: AI from a Roman Palazzo

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Jan 26, 2021

Paris fashion weeks shows often don’t only take place in Paris anymore. Due to the pandemic, entire seasons now take place online, and more and more “phygital” shows actually take place in other countries, or even continents.

 
Case in point, Valentino couture on Tuesday, which was staged inside a magnificent Roman palazzo, the cast marching over marble and porphyry floors, the gilded Renaissance room illuminated by huge chandeliers.
 
A work of performance art composed by Valentino couturier Pierpaolo Piccioli and Robert Del Naja, the Massive Attack founder and artist. Entitled Code Temporal and staged inside the Galleria Colonna, home of a Roman family that is part of the Aristocrazia Nera, meaning they have even supplied a pope.

The collection was aptly ceremonial; with ivory perforated capes; swirling faille coats in fuchsia and ritualistic rose crepe sheathes. The colors recalled the vestments seen in high masses in St. Peter’s Basilica.
 
Adding a twist, many models wore golden masks. Several, attired in either a giant pinafore in Valentino’s sinful red, or a pink sexy reverend mother cape, marched in silver or gold thigh boots.

Designer Piccioli loves audacious hues, mixing up light turquoise tops; dusters of broken gold sequins; gold clocqué lamé jackets and tops; or saffron yellow coats. This collection marked an edgier direction for Valentino and Piccioli and was all the better for that. Pierpaolo has staged some stellar shows in Paris this past half decade but had begun to repeat himself. This felt like a designer breaking new ground.
 
Especially with the perfectly cut flared georgette skirts; wonderful dresses topped with pearly skullcaps and champagne metal sequin coats so densely sewn they looked like shearling.
 
The only black in the event was worn by PPP, taking a quiet bow in black flak jacket and matching mask; Massive Attack on the soundtrack, as 15 masked members of his atelier’s staff in white coats then appeared in a collegial touch.

On Friday, Valentino will broadcast on its social network a Del Naja film, 'Making of the Haute Couture Collection,' produced and edited for the first time by artificial intelligence.
 
Del Naja spent the last few months capturing the rituals and rites of couture. Images which have been transformed and edited by artificial intelligence in the form of algorithms programmed by artist Mario Klingemann, partner of Del Naja.
 
“Through the synthetic filter of artificial intelligence, the emotional aspect of Couture emerges, with the celebration and enhancement of human quality: a code that is constantly regenerating itself while remaining timeless,” said Valentino in one of its famous highfalutin releases.