Mis-Matched Accessories

Valentino Fall/ Winter 2020-2021

Ready-To-Wear

Valentino’s most recent ready-to-wear collection featured a strong contrast in prints, colors, and shapes. Designer Piccioli said, “What I wanted to do was a portrait of a moment with no categories. Fashion has to record and embrace big changes in the world. We have to encourage tolerance and equality.” In other words, keep pushing inclusivity. The model line up consisted of curvy, colored, gay, straight, trans, and everything in between models. In addition, we also saw men wearing women’s clothing and visa versa. This pushed the idea that fashion truly has no boundaries.

One way this message was conveyed was strongly through the styling team’s use of accessories. The main trend we saw repeating itself every other garment was the use of just one earring. Some earrings were barely noticeable studs, and some earrings were large and dangled down to the model’s shoulder. Many head-to-toe black looks were styled this way. Using just one earring over and over again is admirable, because it is a challenging look to style tastefully. Wearing one in this case worked to show off more of the wearer’s internal personality. Piccioli spoke about how some of the looks resembled a “uniform” because he wanted people to get to know the person inside the garment as opposed to judging them based on their outward appearance.

The collection mostly featured solid-colored looks, and varied between casual and more put together pieces. Styling less casual items to be worn more comfortably is something the current pandemic has made popular. But Valentino is here to say that owning something put together can also be easy to wear, too. Universal garments work to make the everyday into something not so average, something many luxury designers have been up to lately.