Vanity Fair UK - 10.2019

Vanities My Place

For Valentino creative

director Pierpaolo

Piccioli, Rome’s cultural

contradictions make

for ripe inspiration

LOCAL TIME

“That tension between high and low,

pagan and Catholic—that’s the feeling

that Roma wants to deliver,” Pierpaolo

Piccioli says about his birthplace and

that of Valentino, the nearly 60-year-

old fashion house he has led since 2008

(he assumed sole creative control in

2016). The city’s roots in duality—wolf-

weaned twins Romulus and Remus

are its mythic founders—live on for the

designer, whether he’s taking the train

from seaside Nettuno while watching

Fellini films on a laptop or putting

forth Born in Roma, a his-and-hers scent

fronted by models Anwar Hadid and

Adut Akech. “She wears couture like it’s

a T-shirt,” Piccioli says of Akech’s

“effortless elegance,” which applies as

handily to the man himself. “When

you work in Rome, you can’t compete

with Caravaggio or Bernini, so you do

what you can.” —LAURA REGENSDORF

Ara Pacis,aRoman

altarfrom9B.C.,

a

s for his time

spiration

Matth

602.

A resort

2020 look, right,

h OBotanic

en is a

cause it

tofthe

ke bein

world.”

“

the Ita

like

Fellini

ow h

nd

b

di Paolo—so intimate

OCTOBER 2019 ILLUSTRATIONS BY SARAH MAYCOCK VANITY FAIR 35

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM ARCHIVIO FOTOGRAFICO PAOLO DI PAOLO (MAGNANI), BY EMILIA COCUZZI (ARA PA

CIS), FROM FINE ART IMAGES/

HERITAGE IMAGES (CARAVAGGIO), BY NIRUT

SAELIM/EYEEM (CHERRY BLOSSOMS),

KEVIN SHORT/EYEEM (PALM TREE

), ALL FROM GETTY

IMAGES; BY INEZ & VINOODH (PICCIOL

I); FROM JANUS FILMS/PHOTOFEST (

L’AVVENTURA

); FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS