Ticket to Utopia

Valentino SS20
By Kinza Shenn | Fashion | 20 June 2019

The humid tropical dreamscapes featured in Valentino’s SS20 collection are works by English fantasy artist Roger Dean. Dean’s paintings are bright: one used in the collection, an artwork originally designed for prog-rock band, Yes, in the ‘90s, uses Liquitex Cadmium Yellow paints so pigmented, they were shortly after recalled for toxicity. The puddled prints drip off shoulders and spill down sleeves. Full-bleed mushroom clouds and cliffy purple waterfalls.

Pierpaolo Piccioli’s advice for your next summer holiday? Skip the airfare and take a trip into imagined utopias. He muses in his show notes that travelling “truly enlightens and enriches when it takes the form a free-flowing, borderless meandering of the mind”. The models were aptly dressed for IRL adventure in any case, wearing nylon bucket hats and anoraks, new Garavani Rockrunner Plus hiking sneakers, and puka shell necklaces and djellabas probably picked up along the way.

GALLERYCatwalk images from Valentino SS20





BACKSTAGE