Embrace Eternal Masculinity with Maison Valentino Essentials

Valentino invites you to reject ephemerality.

Fashion, like many other arts and beauty industries, is built with a certain temporality. Collections are meant to break the mold, start a trend, and eventually die out. Once a designer’s vision has reached mass scale, it’s already dead in the water; time to create something newer, more unique and more trend-setting. Around and around we go, passing from fad to fad. Maison Valentino has rejected this notion, embracing some eternality of fashion with their new capsule collection, Maison Valentino Essentials. Effortlessly masculine and expertly produced, the collection is here to stay (forever). 

Image courtesy of Maison Valentino Essentials
Image courtesy of Maison Valentino Essentials

Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccoli had a mission for Maison Valentino Essentials: craft an eternal masculinity, one that reflects both past and future forms of tasteful manhood. Masculinity, specifically in the fashion world, is ever-changing. Where masculinity was one of rugged denims and tuxedos, now we find more daring statements in gender-bending and flowing silhouettes. Inspired by 1950s Italian filmmaking, Piccoli transposed that old-world masculine energy into new forms, creating something an image of menswear that is both classic and future-forward. 

Image courtesy of Maison Valentino Essentials
Image courtesy of Maison Valentino Essentials

If you were expecting standard campaign imaging, you’d be mistaken. What’s more ephemeral than the traditional model/photographer setup? In line with the Maison Valentino Essentials theme, the House employed AI software to create digitized, hyper-real photos. While garments stand in their individuality, they are surrounded by the crashing waves of technology. Introducing a new era of fashion photography, the images reach for some new-age concepts of permanence. 

Image courtesy of Maison Valentino Essentials
Image courtesy of Maison Valentino Essentials

As a creative director, Pierpaolo Piccoli certainly has a vision. It’s an intricate piece of artwork, with pages and pages of notes detailing just how each garment and photo emboldens his vision. In an age of low-concept fashion (what’s more base than the littering of ‘barbiecore’ collections), Piccoli opts to move in a high-art direction. It’s not snooty or pretentious, but rather a visionary feat. Piccoli is an artist in both mind and spirit.

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