BULLETIN: Valentino Begins New Fur-Free Chapter

Maison Valentino will shutter their younger sister line REDValentino by 2024, and be fur-free from 2022, in a new move aimed at repositioning the brand. Creating a more streamlined business in line with the contemporary audience wooed over recent years by creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, the focus on the mainline Valentino brand and using more sustainable materials signals that the Italian brand is continuing to move with the times.

First established in 2003, REDValentino (an acronym for Roman Eccentric Dress), focused on the growing youthful and urban Valentino customer, however the audience it once appealed to increasingly turns to the mainline. Since joining the label in 2008 and becoming sole creative director in 2016, Pierpaolo Piccioli has taken Valentino through a renaissance, reworking house codes with projects such as the VLogo book, (where 16 iconic magazines reimagined the signature logo), and the upcoming Rockstud X project where designers including Craig Green will give their own spin on the iconic design feature. Working with models such as Adut Akech and creating a digital couture show with Nick Knight, Piccioli has placed inclusivity, collaboration and innovation at the forefront of the brand. Valentino today has arguably never felt as relevant and youthful since the early days of Valentino Garavani himself, and despite efforts by Piccioli to revitalise the REDValentino brand, (including a campaign featuring Rina Lipa, sister to singer Dua Lipa), the brand has chosen to align their designs into one creative vision. A/W 24 will be the final REDValentino collection.

'The aesthetic vision of our creative director - combined with the artisanal spirit and excellence of the workmanship - harmonizes perfectly with new technologies and future objectives. The inputs to which our customers, or friends of the house, are exposed to every day are many. In this scenario, the concentration on one, and only one brand, will better support a more organic growth of the Maison', explains CEO Jacopo Venturini.