The red is still there, but it doesn't carry the room the way it used to

The red is still there, but it doesn't carry the room the way it used to. At the spring 2025 show in Paris, the signature Rosso Valentino appeared on perhaps three looks out of seventy. The rest was cream, black, navy, and a particular shade of grey that read, depending on the light, as either slate or pewter. The front row noticed. So did the analysts.

Valentino is in the middle of something. Not quite a crisis, not quite a renaissance. The house is profitable, visible, and still operating at the level of craft that justifies its position. But the centre has shifted, and no one is entirely sure where it will settle.

Valentino and Garavani

The house was founded in 1960 by Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti. Garavani handled design, Giammetti handled everything else. The partnership worked for nearly five decades. The clothes were formal, romantic, unapologetically luxurious. Garavani favoured heavy silk, intricate embroidery, and that red — a shade he saw at the opera in Barcelona and spent two years perfecting with dye houses in Como. It became the house signature in 1962 and appeared in nearly every collection after.

The clientele was narrow and extremely loyal. Jacqueline Kennedy wore Valentino to her second wedding. Elizabeth Taylor ordered custom gowns by the dozen. The house built its reputation on couture, not ready-to-wear, and didn't open its first boutique until 1967. Even then, the focus was on made-to-measure evening wear. Valentino wasn't trying to dress everyone. It was trying to dress a particular type of woman at a particular type of event.

Garavani retired in 2008. The house had been sold to private equity in 1998, then again in 2002, and by the time he left it was already operating under a different logic. The new owners wanted growth. That meant ready-to-wear, accessories, and a younger customer. It also meant a succession of creative directors who were hired, in part, to make the house feel less like Valentino.

Piccioli's decade

Pierpaolo Piccioli took over as sole creative director in 2016, after eight years as co-creative director with Maria Grazia Chiuri. He had been at the house since 1999 and understood its vocabulary. But he also understood that the vocabulary needed to expand.

Under Piccioli, Valentino became looser, more colour-saturated, and far more concerned with volume. He kept the couture ateliers running at full capacity but turned their output toward something other than evening gowns. There were capes, oversized coats, wide trousers, and dresses that moved like sculpture. The Rosso Valentino stayed, but it was joined by fuchsia, turquoise, and a shade of pink that became, for a few seasons, as recognisable as the red.

The strategy worked. Revenue grew from €1.04 billion in 2016 to €1.4 billion in 2022. The brand became visible in a way it hadn't been since the 1980s. Zendaya wore Piccioli's work to the 2021 Oscars. Florence Pugh wore it to Venice. The house was back in the conversation.

But visibility is not the same as stability. By 2023, growth had stalled. The ready-to-wear was selling, but not at the pace the parent company, Mayhoola, wanted. The accessories were underperforming. The menswear, relaunched in 2019, hadn't found an audience. And the shows, while critically admired, were starting to feel repetitive. Piccioli's last collection for Valentino was shown in March 2024. He left by mutual agreement.

Vaccarello's arrival

Alessandro Michele was rumoured. So was Matthieu Blazy. The appointment went to Anthony Vaccarello, who had spent nearly a decade at Saint Laurent and was known for a kind of controlled minimalism that seemed, on paper, like the opposite of what Valentino had been doing.

Vaccarello's first collection appeared in September 2024. It was quieter than expected. The silhouettes were narrow, the palette was neutral, and the Rosso Valentino appeared only at the very end, on a single gown that closed the show. The reviews were mixed. Some called it a necessary reset. Others called it boring.

The clothes themselves were well made. Vaccarello knows how to cut a jacket, and the tailoring in the collection was sharp without being severe. But the question hanging over the show wasn't about technique. It was about identity. Valentino had spent the last decade building a visual language around colour and volume. Vaccarello's first move was to strip both away. It was a gamble, and it's not yet clear whether it will pay off.

The numbers suggest caution. Revenue for 2024 is projected to land somewhere between €1.35 billion and €1.4 billion, roughly flat compared to the previous year. The accessories business, which accounts for nearly 60 per cent of sales, is still underperforming relative to competitors like Bottega Veneta and Loewe. The Locò bag, introduced in 2023, hasn't become the commercial anchor the house needed. The Roman Stud, relaunched under Vaccarello, is doing better, but not well enough to move the overall trajectory.

The challenge is partly creative and partly structural. Valentino is owned by Mayhoola, the Qatari investment fund that also controls Balmain. Mayhoola is patient by private equity standards, but it is not indifferent to growth. The fund reportedly wants Valentino to reach €2 billion in revenue within five years. That target requires not just good collections but a clear product strategy, a stronger retail footprint, and a creative direction that can translate into accessories and entry-level pieces without diluting the brand.

Vaccarello has the technical skill. What's less certain is whether he has the vision to redefine what Valentino means now, in 2025, when the original codes feel distant and the Piccioli era is still too recent to revive.

Where it stands

Walk into the Valentino flagship on Via Condotti in Rome and you'll see two things. First, the atelier photographs from the 1960s, hung in gilt frames near the entrance. Second, the current collection, arranged on chrome rails under halogen light. The gap between the two is the gap the house is trying to close.

Valentino still has the ateliers. It still has the craftsmen who can execute a couture gown in under two weeks. It still has the brand equity that comes from sixty years of dressing women at the highest level of formality. What it doesn't have, at the moment, is a clear answer to the question of what it wants to be when most of its customers are not attending the opera or a state dinner.

The house is profitable, visible, and technically accomplished. But it is also in between. Vaccarello's first year will determine whether the current direction is a recalibration or a miscalculation. The next collection shows in February. The front row will be watching.