Valentino’s creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli has done such a good job of perpetuating the dream of Roman life in his ready-to-wear and haute couture collections that it’s sometimes easy to forget that the designer doesn’t actually live in the city. Instead, he arrives in the Eternal City early each morning (quite often by train) and discreetly exits Valentino H.Q. on the Piazza Mignanelli late every evening—commuting back and forth to Nettuno, the lively seaside village he grew up in about an hour outside of Rome. A stone’s throw from the Fascist architecture of Sabaudia, a favorite topic of another Pier Paolo (Pasolini), Nettuno is anything but rational—centered on its medieval borgo, or central square, the lively tourist spot boasts a bustling recreational port and popular holiday accommodations stretching right down onto the sand. It is there, yards away from a hive of vacation sublets with turquoise green awnings and celadon fiberglass facades that Piccioli’s own seaside abode surveys the Tyrrhenian Sea. “This is my escape,” Piccioli tells AD of the beachside retreat he keeps as a weekend spot for family and friends in addition to his family home in the center of town. “I love the city in all its complexity, but my natural habitat is mostly marine. [This house] is a special alcove where I find refuge from the chaos of everyday life. I come here when I need to focus and detox, decompress, and find balance. I spend my time at home drawing and thinking, writing, and relaxing with the whole family.We are all very happy to share this intimate space, doing simple things together such as cooking and watching movies.”
Directly below Valentino creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli’sseaside getaway in Nettuno, his hometown on the Tyrrhenian coast, the crystalline waters crash up against a classical column balustrade and a low terrazzo deck, photographed by Piccioli's friend and collaborator Lorenzo Castore. Itplayed a supporting role in Piccioli’s latestValentino resort 2021 look book, where the designer himself photographedItalian supermodel Mariacarla Boscono in his designs.
Despite the natural grandeur of ocean views from the terra-cotta-paved terraces, Piccioli’s beach house is refreshing in its simplicity—a space not “designed” but lovingly composed and added to over the years by the designer; his wife, Simona; and their children Benedetta, Pietro, and Stella. “Everything regarding this house is personal, intimate, reserved,” says Piccioli, who is more likely to invite extended family and childhood friends for aperitivi than host a superstar coterie of Hollywood actors and society figures—the likes of whom are more likely to gravitate to Mr. Valentino Garavani himself. “Personally, I don’t like representative houses, built as perfect images, studied in every detail as a design product, just as I don’t like the word lifestyle, whatever it means. My house is a real one: Its value is all human, and it has to please no one but us, the ones who live in it.”
"As a designer, chromatic research is one of the creative aspects that interests me the most—I identify my whole life with color," says Piccioli, who sits at a glass-topped desk in the main salon to sketch his collections surrounded by books, colored pencils, and crayons.
The designer spent much of his confinement consulting Italian poetry books, compendiums of Renaissance paintings, and contemporary literature to inspire his recent resort 2021 collection and his upcoming haute couture autumn/winter 2020 collection.
Piccioli’s humble outlook belies the lived-in beauty of his spaces, where subtle nods to Italian design history meet classic fittings and a healthy clutter of personal ephemera. An ornate kaleidoscope of beige-and-blue maiolica tiles grounds the living room floor firmly in the decorative traditions of the region, while corniced wooden walls are left mostly bare aside from framed illustrations by Piccioli’s daughter Stella and the American fashion illustrator Richard Haines. Haines’s raw depictions of Valentino haute couture outfits capture the designer’s vivid color combinations with aplomb—yet it’s the amateur works that truly have his eye. “My children’s drawings are the most valuable piece of art in the whole house,” says Piccioli. “Again, the real value of every single piece is emotional.Richard’s illustrations are instinctive and immediate—in this sense they look particularly authentic and pure to me. Also, I like the fact that my son and my daughters love them.”
