As the creative director of Italian fashion house Valentino, Pierpaolo Piccioli simply wants to celebrate beauty. You’re probably thinking, “A fashion designer who is into beauty? Groundbreaking.” Beauty, however, is in scarce supply in fashion nowadays – especially the kind of beauty that Piccioli champions. You do not need to be a fashion insider to know that ugliness sells. While it may be a lazy way to create buzz and gain attention, ugliness – often with an ironic twist – is made for short attention spans and the virality of social media. It is no wonder that designers left and right have embraced it with open arms. Piccioli begs to differ. “I believe that beauty has a lot of power,” he says from the Valentino headquarters in the heart of Rome, the day after the brand’s latest haute couture show in early July. “Ugliness can often be contemporary or modern as a reaction to the ugliness in the world, but that approach is a bit superficial. I believe that you need to react to the ugliness in the world with beauty.” The blockbuster show – envisioned as a celebration of beauty and as a dialogue with house founder Valentino Garavani – took place on the Spanish Steps, a stone’s throw from Piccioli’s studio and the Valentino couture ateliers. “Beauty and creativity are tools to defeat ugliness and are very resilient tools,” Piccioli adds. “Beauty is not only achieved with ribbons and pretty things, but also by who wears certain things. “Beauty is not just creating an ostentatious glamour in a precise way, it’s harmony and grace. On the Spanish Steps at a fashion show 35 years ago, you never would have seen that group of people, like black and Asian women .” Making Valentino – long associated with socialites and the red carpet – relevant to a younger generation and to modern times has been Piccioli’s mission since he took over as sole creative director six years ago, after Maria Grazia Chiuri, his co-designer at the house, left for Dior . Haute couture is the creation of custom-made clothing for the privileged few who can afford it and is far from accessible, but if there is ever a designer able to maintain the dream of haute couture and ground it in reality it is undoubtedly Piccioli. “Couture, especially for young people, is a way of self-expression and extravagance; it’s linked to a dream and to uniqueness and being one of a kind, and less about luxury as it relates to craftsmanship – that snob and elitist luxury of 10 years ago,” he says. “Even if you can’t buy couture, you can still live it and admire it and appreciate it, like you do a Picasso in a museum. You can feel those emotions without wearing it and buying it.” The guests at the Rome show certainly felt those emotions, which culminated in Piccioli taking his bow down the Spanish Steps with his entire atelier. He says proudly that many young people these days are more than willing to learn a craft like dressmaking – and make a career out of it – a path that his generation would shun to pursue a white-collar office job, especially in his native Italy. Piccioli, who lives in a seaside town outside Rome with his wife and children, is laid-back, friendly and approachable – a far cry from the aloof fashion designer that has become a common trope. “I’m a couturier of 2022, not a couturier of the ’60s. I don’t have afternoon tea with my clients like Valentino [Garavani] used to do. I hate all the stereotypes about my job,” he says. “I study couture and make it the way it has to be done with all the rituals associated with it, but I also do ready-to-wear and accessories and I live and witness this moment right now. “It’s not like the ivory towers of 50 years ago, when designers were surrounded by candles and flowers and had tea with their clients. That’s not who I am.” Piccioli’s 23-year tenure at Valentino also makes him an outlier in an industry where designers are guns for hire and are given a couple of seasons to succeed at a brand before being replaced, often by someone with a large Instagram following rather than actual talent. “For me, this brand is home. I don’t like musical chairs because it almost feels like you’re just an employee, even if you are a creative director,” says Piccioli. “This job is a choice every single day, and I do it because I love it and because it’s a way to tell [others] who I am and what I believe in – but you have to do it in a place where you feel at home or it becomes an exercise in style and technique. I don’t like that. “I really feel myself in this place and fulfilled; I’m not just interpreting but I’m part of this house.” Piccioli, who posts on Instagram when he feels like it but does not use it as a marketing tool – “I’m not politically correct and post what I believe,” he says – has made inclusivity and openness key elements at Valentino, starting from the casting of his shows and campaigns to the celebrities he works with and the causes he supports. “Giving a stage that’s so important to people of different cultures and men who wear women’s couture or women of different bodies and age means showing all these peculiarities that become unique,” he says, referring to the show in Rome. “It reflects what’s happening in the world, which can’t be ignored – it’s a way to convey the values you fight for; otherwise, fashion only becomes a world of ribbons and pretty things that don’t mean anything. “At a time like this you can’t be indifferent, and you have to do it with the power of beauty and by giving power to this type of humanity and to people exactly as they are, without creating a standard and bowing to uniformity. “It’s a beauty linked to uniqueness and diversity.” Piccioli’s Valentino is a radical departure from that of founder Valentino Garavani, the now nonagenarian Roman couturier known for mingling with royalty and ladies who lunch, and for dressing them in exquisite confections. In regions such as Greater China – where Valentino has really found its feet in the past 15 years thanks to the success of its accessories and shoes – many fans of the label are not aware of the rarefied history of the house or that of its founder. Piccioli likes it that way. “I don’t mind that many customers in China don’t know about the history of Valentino. What you don’t know is new, not what’s actually new. I like that Valentino is seen as a new brand,” he says. “The idea that you like a brand without a reason is great. I want this brand to be perceived as a new brand that has a past and that is for those who want to be part of a community. “We moved from the idea of socialites and that lifestyle to the idea of a community and of couture for a different generation.”