Soft-Revolution: Pierpaolo Piccioli (Valentino Couture) and his "body-conscious" philosophy

Like all of you, I follow the fashion week shows, particularly haute couture. I'm interested in seeing the latest trends, especially in color and shape, but this keen curiosity doesn't influence my judgment, because the key to understanding all these trends, the lens through which I view the world, is still my opinion and my critical sense.

These catwalks have often accustomed us to over-the-top theatrical spectacles; the intense desire to make a splash often goes far beyond simple creativity. This leads me to look disenchanted at the livestream videos of the shows or the photo reports. Sometimes, however, I'm pleasantly surprised.

I particularly appreciated Pierpaolo Piccioli's body-conscious campaign for Valentino, which was behind this year's couture collection, which sparked much discussion and was quite divisive. Creating garments based on bodies of different proportions, sizes, and ages is a positive revolution that leads to a standard of beauty that is very close to authenticity.

Valentino is one of those historic brands that have captivated an international audience because they have always represented dreams, tradition, and ethereal, ideal beauty. It was the beauty of top models Naomi, Linda, and Claudia—women who were objectively and indisputably beautiful. As Mariella Milani aptly commented in a recent and enlightening video post on social media, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Valentino's creative director, is somehow challenging this logic and popularizing a type of beauty that is certainly less dreamy, but which embodies the vast majority of women walking the streets.

Today, it's hard to argue that beauty is subjective. In reality, beauty is objective in many ways, but there's also a subjective form of beauty that corresponds to the expectations, desires, and desires each of us harbors within ourselves. It's important to stay connected to these expectations and subjective thoughts, because they're the source of our personal opinion, which, in this world full of stimuli and contradictions, must continue to be a guide, or rather, a direction to follow. Let me explain.

Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, and Claudia Schiffer were objectively beautiful women, so it's true that they created problems for many girls who lacked those physical qualities, but in those years, beauty was a dream; it had to be a distant, stereotypical image, extraordinarily glamorous. It was an image that captured the secret or manifest desires of a society.

Today's society is extremely different, more diverse, and stratified. This isn't to say we can no longer speak of objective beauty; on the contrary, a new vision and social consciousness of beauty has emerged, because women who carry extra pounds, who have imperfections, and women on the street no longer recognize themselves in those models, and no longer want to. We can therefore say that society today expresses desires that are decidedly more manifest, completely different and opposite to those of the past.

This new generation of designers, of which Pierpaolo Piccioli is a part, has captured this social shift and is changing the rules of creative direction for major brands, and thus the shining examples many are comparing themselves to. It's obviously difficult to change course, but they're doing well, because they're reaching out to women of all ages and sizes, of all proportions and measurements, who have been disillusioned by a certain kind of fashion that's somehow alien.

The communication efforts directed at these brands, however, struggle to recognize the value of this change, so much so that there has been considerable criticism and little consensus. This is no small matter. Communication is the soul of commerce; what the mainstream media communicates resonates with millions of people; what ambassadors wear still influences so many. We all know the hilarious scene from the film The Devil Wears Prada, in which Miranda (Meryl Streep) flattens Andrea (Anne Hathaway) in a masterful monologue, speaking about the key role of communication in highlighting "this stuff!"—that is, the stylistic choices of various creatives.

It's therefore difficult to find authenticity in communication. On the contrary, communication often expresses something inauthentic, simply because it's dictated by advertising investments. I wouldn't trust a spokesperson paid to wear, photograph, and talk about this or that item, but rather the quality/price ratio and, therefore, the intrinsic quality of what you want to buy. Above all, I wouldn't believe in trends and I wouldn't wear something just because it's designer. The invitation, therefore, is to follow your personal opinion, your desires, your expectations of yourself—in short, what you really like, not what's trendy.