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Valentino Collaborates with 18 Artists to Celebrate Itself

Resignification is Valentino Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli’s personal work process by which he wants to define Valentino for today and in its future. “This is an act of love toward memories, but without nostalgia,” he says.

Valentino has an important archive that is a constant source of inspiration, but inspiration needs to be directed and worked with a different approach. The second iteration of Valentino’s Re-Signify exhibition was nothing less than a multi-dimensional, hyper-active celebration of Maison Valentino. Designed by Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli, it took place in Beijing, in SKP South’s T-10 exhibition space and featured content from all aspects of the longstanding Italian house from Valentino Beauty to Haute Couture.

“Re-signification is my own personal work process by which the signs of today create the foundation of what can become the signs of tomorrow,” described the designer.

The exhibition offered a dialogue between the house’s signs and the artwork of 18 artists, including Cao Fei, Xu Zhen, Gioele Amaro, Robert Müller, Liu Shiyuan, Cheng Ran, Shen Xin, Xu Wenkai, AMKK, Jonas Mekas, Yeesookyung, Nick Knight, Jacopo Benassi, PaJaMa, Robert Del Naja, Wu Rui, and Alessandro Teoldi. Through a variety of viewpoints and languages, the works offered meditations on the city, the fashion, and the self.

When combined, the works of Piccioli and these artists created a unique, multi-media experience that celebrated the Valentino brand and identity in a novel way. All the pieces existed in a dynamic setting with the artworks. Overall, the second chapter of Valentino’s Re-Signify experiential exhibition in Beijing presented a new manner in which to view fashion, which is both contemporary and classically museum-like.

Pierpaolo Piccioli’s creative process and the works of artists who, through multiple pathways and languages, each different from each other because they are poetically personal, ended up questioning themselves on the same themes that were explored in the selected works.

The dresses chosen by Pierpaolo Piccioli, from the Maison’s archive, from the recent and contemporary Haute Couture collections, including Valentino Of Grace and Light, Valentino Code Temporal, Valentino Act Collection, exhibited on Bonaveri mannequins, immersed themselves in this art territory and brought in new moments of understanding.