Moncler Pierpaolo Piccioli

“This collection saw Valentino’s often smoking and always interesting creative director apply a collaboration to a collaboration. He approached his friend Liya Kebede to input the patterns and aesthetic of her sustainable and socially responsible Ethiopian label Lemlem to his couture interpretation of Moncler…The looks had the same voluptuous volume of his first presentation for Genius, but here they were interrupted by the graphic vibrancy of Lemlem’s contribution. So how has Moncler + PPP + Lemlem turned into his latest expression of Genius? …“I don’t think that you can really do anything new today. But you can create new harmonies—new points of view and perspectives… I did this little collection while I was doing couture, while I was doing other things. And of course what I wanted to do is, through my own identity, interpret the worlds of Moncler. I felt I wanted to add the feeling of another perspective—specifically the Liya perspective. I think that inclusivity is not a just word; I really believe in the idea of working together in a way that gives you new points of view . . . and I was thinking that when couture was born it was not meant to be for black women. It was just for white women. Magazines like Jet were not even allowed to borrow clothes! So this collection is to show that the dream of couture should be allowed for everybody, and that’s why the idea of Liya worked so well.” Kebede’s virtuous circle of a label, Lemlem, is produced by artisan seamstresses in her native Ethiopia, who apply traditional patterns to contemporarily pitched European-style clothes…I wanted to re-create the Lemlem fabrics in nylon. I think that if you talk about something like this—a new perspective—it is very good.”

– Vogue (by LUKE LEITCH)

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