 "Fashion designer Pierpaolo Piccioli quits Valentino after 25 years, shares emotional post")
Valentino creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli is leaving the Italian fashion house, the latest in a series of high profile designer changes in the industry.
The label on Friday said it had agreed with Piccioli to end their collaboration, adding that a new “creative organisation” would be announced soon.
The flurry of recent design changes come as the luxury industry adjusts to lower growth following a post-pandemic spending frenzy. Barclays projects industry sales to rise around 5% this year, down from nearly 9% last year as younger consumers rein in purchases amid rising costs.
The designer penned a heartfelt note on Instagram about his experience of working with the iconic brand and what he will take away from it.
He wrote- “Not all stories have a beginning and an end, some live a kind of eternal present that shines with an intense light, so strong that it leaves no shadows. I have been in this company for 25 years, and for 25 years I have existed and lived together with the people who with me have woven the threads of this beautiful story that is mine and ours. Everything existed and exists thanks to the people I have met, with whom I have worked, with whom I have shared dreams and created beauty, with whom I have built something that belongs to everyone, and which remains immutable and tangible.”
The designer added, “I carry this heritage of love, dreams, beauty and humanity with me, today and forever. All the emotions that I have felt and that I feel remain with me and that bear the name of the people who climbed with me along impervious and unknown paths that led us to beautiful and now known panoramas. Stay with me, you who know who you are because it is to you that I am writing, to you who I owe this legacy of love which is stainless and perpetual.”
Known for dramatic, haute couture designs that are popular with the red carpet set, including singer Zendaya, Piccioli started working at Valentino in 1999 and took on the role of sole creative director in 2016.
“His contribution over the past 25 years will leave an indelible mark,” Valentino’s chairman Rachid Mohamed Rachid said.
Another high profile designer, Dries Van Noten, announced earlier this week plans to retire from his label, which belongs to Spanish group Puig.
With added inputs from agencies
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