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Valentino passes away at 93: How the iconic Valentino pink redefined dopamine dressing for the ages
The summer of Valentino pink may have ended - but not its impact
Internet culture may lead us to believe that the demise of every trend, is in its own way, 'the end of an era'. But once in a blue moon, an architect of archetypes breathes their last and the closing in of that era feels viscerally real.
Valentino Garavani left the world and an insurmountable legacy last night at the age of 93. The news was confirmed by his foundation as they summed up the "innate elegance" of his work, a result of his “ceaseless pursuit of beauty.”
As an ode, we take a deep dive into how the Italian fashion luxury house reinvented the very peppy dopamine dressing, for the refined red carpet and runway ranks - entirely encased in the unmissably signature Valentino pink (and nothing else).
The birth
Valentino's FW 22 ready-to-wear collection at Paris Fashion Week in March 2022 unilaterally spotlighted the saturated Valentino pink, a fitting orchestration to really drive home its all-consuming energy. The shade was a custom hue formulated via collaboration between creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, Pantone Colour and visual artist, designer and novelist Douglas Coupland. The brief? "Minimalists are merely hoarding space. Become your pose."
And the rest was history.
In the blink of an eye, it was this one-tone visceral maximalism that started flooding red carpets and feeds, completing edging out minimalist safe-playing. If you were getting your Valentino pink on back in 2022 - that's ALL you could have on, period. Not a shade more. The kitschy-currency was of course through the roof for this moment in fashion, but Valentino pink, its utterly-saturated visual impact aside, was mind-boggling for the cultural reckoning it represented. The early fleet of celebrities who took it live on the red carpets were of course tagged the season's trailblazers. But as the months rolled on, if you hadn't pulled an all-Valentino pink for the paps once (and only once), you simply weren't daring enough. Talk about balance. Zendaya true to her experimental form was among the first big names to paint our screens pink.
Other names on the exclusive list include Anne Hathaway, Dua Lipa, Simone Ashley and Sebastian Stan to name a few, with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Ranveer Singh also making the ranks closer home.
Fashion's Valentino pink season was dopamine dressing on steroids and only Valentino's ethos could have packaged the sensory overdose with such grace and luxury.
The long breath
Cut to present-day, for all practical purposes, Valentino pink is dead. But its impact is beyond just the neon gradation. Stylist Isha Bhansali says, “If you want to specifically talk about the Valentino pink collection, it's the colour that just changed the whole perception (for dopamine dressing). It was this very bright, fluorescent pink which came with a very well-balanced couture line. The silhouettes were as good as quiet luxury. And it made one statement. There were no multiple statements. That's what made the collection and colour a winner. The colour's always appealing to the eye. It was a very fresh take on couture, comparatively to what brand had been lately doing. It definitely made heads turn and look at Valentino all over again. It's why Valentino has always been known as a top couturier.”
Top couturier indeed, given how single-handedly, the luxury house managed to throw open the doors to sartorial joy - especially after the drab pandemic years. Isha adds, “Dopamine dressing is something that gives you that instant high. And the Valentino pink reflects that - especially when it came after a long break of muted browns, because quiet luxury had started getting really big. Fluorescents too came back after a long time, which reinforced that dopamine hit.”
The death
You may agree or disagree with the entire aesthetic takeaway of fashion's Valentino pink season, but that year of photo-ops made sure you could never look away. Not to say the hue and its commonplace usage didn't permeate beyond the million-dollar clientele, but the chokehold of the referenced era lies primarily in the fact that you can't replicate it in the present without somebody screaming '2022' at you, or in their heads.
The willingness to reinvent with such jarring stakes actually speaks greatly to Garavani's larger-than-life aura and self-assured gait, which only grew stronger over the decades as the Italian luxury fashion house minted itself into a forward-charging voice in global fashion. But behind it all was just a boy with a mammoth vision, hoping to be cemented into psyches, beyond the millennium.
"I hope people will say, 'Mr. Valentino, he did something for fashion, no?' ", he had quipped once. And the answer will always be, tons.
