The atelier sits on the fourth floor of Palazzo Mignanelli, two blocks from the Spanish Steps

The atelier sits on the fourth floor of Palazzo Mignanelli, two blocks from the Spanish Steps. At ten past nine on a Tuesday morning, Maria Grazia Chiuri is not here—she left for Dior in 2016—and neither is Pierpaolo Piccioli, who departed in 2024. What remains are the hands that built the dresses both designers signed.

Renata Balducci has worked at Valentino for thirty-one years. She is a première d'atelier, which means she translates a sketch into fabric and manages the team that executes it. On the table in front of her is a gown in development: ivory silk faille, cut on the bias, with a train that will eventually measure four metres. The bodice is still pinned. She adjusts the dart at the waist by two millimetres, re-pins, and moves to the sleeve head.

This is the work that doesn't photograph. It is also the work that makes a Valentino gown move the way it does.

The Hands That Build the Red

Valentino Garavani opened his atelier in 1959. The house built its reputation on evening wear, and evening wear is handwork. A single gown from the haute couture line can require three hundred hours. The ready-to-wear is faster, but not by much. The ivory faille dress Balducci is working on will take sixty hours, most of it in fittings and hand-finishing.

Balducci trained at the Accademia di Costume e Moda in Rome, then worked at Gattinoni for five years before joining Valentino in 1993. She was twenty-six. Her first project was a wedding dress for a private client, ivory duchess satin with a chapel train. She remembers the weight of the fabric and the way the bride cried during the final fitting. She does not remember the bride's name.

"You learn to separate," she said in a 2019 interview with Vogue Italia. "The dress is yours until it leaves the atelier. After that, it belongs to the woman who wears it."

Balducci's team is eight people. Three are pattern cutters, two are seamstresses, one is a finisher, one is an embroidery specialist, and one is a junior who does whatever is needed that day. The junior is currently steaming a silk organza overlay that will sit over the faille bodice. She is twenty-three and has been at Valentino for seven months. Her name is Alessia Moretti, and she wants Balducci's job in ten years.

The Signature Piece

The dress in question is not for a client. It is a sample for the pre-collection, which means it will be photographed, possibly produced in small numbers, and eventually archived. The design is Piccioli's, or was—he sketched it in late 2023, before his exit was announced. The current creative director, Alessandro Michele, arrived in April 2024 and has his own vision. This dress is a ghost from the previous regime.

But it is also a Valentino dress in the purest sense. Ivory, not white. Bias-cut, not structured. A train, not a hemline. The house has built its identity on this silhouette since the 1960s, when Garavani dressed Jacqueline Kennedy in a lace gown that became the template for every wedding dress Valentino made afterward. The shape has not changed. The hands that build it have.

Balducci's predecessor was a woman named Lucia Fiorentini, who worked at Valentino from 1962 to 1998. Fiorentini trained under Garavani himself and was known for her ability to drape a bodice without a pattern. She worked by eye, adjusting the fabric on a mannequin until it sat correctly, then cutting the pieces and handing them to a seamstress. Balducci learned the technique from her in the mid-nineties, though she prefers to work from a pattern first and adjust later.

"Lucia could see the dress before it existed," Balducci told Vogue Italia. "I need to touch the fabric first."

The ivory faille is from Taroni, a silk mill in Como that has supplied Valentino since the house opened. The weight is 220 grams per metre, heavier than most bridal silks but still light enough to move. The bias cut requires precise handling—pull the fabric too hard and it distorts, too little and it sags. Balducci has been working with faille for three decades. She does not measure the tension anymore. She feels it.

The Process

A Valentino gown begins with a sketch, which is handed to the pattern-cutting team. The team creates a paper pattern, which is transferred to muslin and fitted on a mannequin. If the shape works, the muslin is fitted on a model. If the model fitting works, the pattern is transferred to the final fabric. Then the real work begins.

The ivory faille dress has been through two muslin fittings and one fabric fitting. The bodice is nearly finished. The skirt is cut but not attached. The train is still flat on the table, waiting for the hem to be marked. Balducci will mark it herself, by hand, with tailor's chalk. The hem will be stitched by Carla Esposito, the finisher, who has been at Valentino since 1987. Esposito's stitches are invisible from the outside and perfectly even on the inside. She uses a single strand of silk thread and a size 10 needle. The hem will take her six hours.

The embroidery specialist, Giovanna Ricci, is not working on this dress. She is working on a coat for the next collection, black wool with silk passementerie at the cuffs. The passementerie is hand-applied, each loop stitched individually. Ricci has been at Valentino since 1995. She trained at Lesage in Paris, then returned to Rome because her mother was ill. She intended to stay for six months. She is still here.

What Comes Next

Michele's first collection for Valentino showed in September 2024. It was not what the house had been under Piccioli. There were no gowns. There were coats, trousers, knits, and a lot of black. The atelier adjusted.

Balducci is now working on a different kind of dress: black crepe, knee-length, with a high neck and long sleeves. It is still Valentino in construction—bias-cut, hand-finished—but it is not a gown. She does not mind. She has built enough gowns.

"The technique is the same," she said in a follow-up interview with WWD in late 2024. "The shape changes, but the hand does not."

Moretti, the junior, is less certain. She came to Valentino to learn how to make gowns. She is now learning how to make coats. She is not sure this is the same thing. Balducci tells her it is. The bias cut works on wool as well as silk. The hem stitch is identical. The only difference is the weight of the fabric and the length of the train.

There is no train on the black crepe dress. Moretti is learning to adjust.

The ivory faille gown is finished now. It hangs in the archive room on the fifth floor, next to a red silk gown from 1968 and a white lace gown from 1982. The label inside reads "Valentino," but it could just as easily read "Balducci" or "Esposito" or "Ricci." The house signs the dress. The hands build it.