Couture Fashion Week: 5 key takeaways from Valentino's autumn/winter 2019 show

Italian luxury fashion brand stages autumn/winter 2019 show in grand Parisian townhouse

This week, some of the world’s most famous fashion houses are staging their autumn/winter 2019 haute couture collections in Paris.

On Wednesday evening, it was the turn of luxury Italian label Valentino which presented a runway show brimming with Instagrammable moments.

This season, the brand's creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli celebrated everything from the organic to the dramatic with a collection that featured floral embroideries, oversized headwear and one of its most diverse model line-ups to date.

One of his Piccioli’s inspirations for the collection was Irving Penn’s “Worlds in a Small Room,” the photographer’s 1974 celebration of cultural diversity.

“It’s not about a geographical situation but about humans,” Piccioli told the Business of Fashion before the show.

“And haute couture is a lot about the human too.”

From the picturesque setting and the vibrant colour palette to the star-studded front row, here are the best moments from Valentino’s autumn/winter 2019 couture show.

The front row

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This season, the front row for Valentino’s couture show was abounding with celebrities including the brand’s founder, 87-year-old Valentino Garavani.

The designer sat surrounded by A-listers including supermodel Naomi Campbell, actor Gwyneth Paltrow and singer Celine Dion.

Other stars spotted gracing the front row were French fashion designer Christian Louboutin, model Heidi Klum, singer FKA Twigs and actor Kristin Scott Thomas.

The location

For his autumn/winter 2019 collection, Piccioli chose the prestigious setting of the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild – a grand Parisian townhouse located just steps away from the city's famous Champs-Elysées.

Surrounded by picturesque grounds, the venue is made up of a succession of Empire-inspired rooms which were filled with luscious green trees that reached the ceiling for the show.

The models travelled through the gilded salons to the sound of Dusty Springfield's “The Look of Love” and Aretha Franklin's “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, before making their way outside via an exotic glasshouse.

The vibrant colour palette

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One of the major talking points from the collection was the surprising combinations of saturated hues.

With virtually every colour on offer, Piccioli teamed marigold with lavender and lime, and azure blue with emerald green.

Elsewhere, burnt orange culottes were worn with a baby pink shirt and ecru-coloured overcoat, while an oversized feather jacket in vibrant mint paired unusually well with a crimson red-hued dress and aqua-toned boots.

The atypical colour combinations continued onto the faces of the models with makeup artist Pat McGrath creating a kaleidoscope of looks that featured glitter arches on the eyes and bleached-out brows.

The diverse runway

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Piccioli dialled up the diversity for autumn/winter 2019, with more than half the models being women of colour and a handful of women over the age of 40.

Adut Akech, the Sudanese-born model who is the new face of Valentino, closed the show wearing a caped purple number while 75-year-old American model Lauren Hutton sashayed down the runway to spontaneous spells of applause in an emerald green dress, grey coat and sparkling magenta gloves.

“The only way to make couture alive today is to embrace different women’s identities and cultures,” Piccioli told British Vogue in a studio preview.

“It’s about the idea of individualism.”

The finale

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Citing Penn’s famous work as one of his inspirations for the show, Piccioli was keen to reflect the human side of fashion – something the indulgent world of couture can often seem so detached from.

Following through with his theme, Piccioli brought the team of artisans who helped bring his designs to life out onto the catwalk for his post-show bow.

Many of the seamstresses were crying as they queued up to embrace the fashion house’s founder, Garavani, who was sitting front row.