The Valentino event in Beijing: a dialogue between fashion and contemporary art

From 17 October 2021 to 7 November 2021, Valentino presents Re-signify part II Beijing, the second chapter of the brand experience curated by Mariuccia Casadio and Jacopo Bedussi in the spaces of T-10 of SKP in the South of Pechino. More an experience than an exhibition, in which the dressed of the brand establish a sort of silent dialogue with the works of art and the viewer has the opportunity to connect the various Valentino codes to art, in a process of semiotic re-meaning carried out by Pierpaolo Piccioli through an artistic and visual research.

The selected clothes, exhibited on Bonaveri mannequins and from the Maison's archive, from recent Haute Couture, including the Valentino Of Grace and Light collections, Valentino Code Temporal, to the Valentino Act Collection Prêt-à-Porter show, communicate with the works, 38 on different supports by 17 different artists, mostly Chinese and Italian, including sculptures, polaroids, prints on fabric, from the punk images of the decomposed bodies of the statues of Parco Sempione by Jacobo Benassi, to the video 'I hate people but I love you' by Xu Wenkai, featuring artificial characters in 3D.

A multimedia path designed to unleash doubt and curiosity with the intention of not offering answers, so that the viewer can get lost and freely explore an open system, developing different and personal interpretations, all valid because possible. The experience for brands is the best way to engage buyers by building a common value system and completing a narrative that today is no longer able to stand only on marketing and advertising. The fashion houses therefore try to propose new initiatives to make their brands a world themselves, an all-encompassing system that contributes to retaining the consumer through emotions and memories.

The choice of Beijing as a location is significant, as is the decision to set the first edition of the 2020 exhibition in the spaces of the Power Station of Arts in Shanghai and the opening of a 700 square meter flagship store in the hipster district of Sanlitun in Beijing, like Burberry in 2020 with the first social retail store in Shenzhen and Lancome's 3D visual flagship in Singapore, as well as Prada's most recent initiative to present two simultaneous fashion shows, in Milan and Shanghai, for spring-summer 2022.

These choices come in the wake of the general need of the fashion houses to strengthen their grip on the Asian market, which, after several years of rapid growth, generally seems tired of still giving its money to foreign luxury brands. Hence the need to open a dialogue, create specific and localized contents, build a common ground that helps to involve Chinese costumers on a deeper and more emotional level.

As Piccioli said on the occasion of Re-signify part I:

"Choosing Shanghai means dealing with a people who ignore the long history of the Valentino maison. After all, what is not known is new: it will be interesting to observe the developments in terms of communication and human contact."