Pierpaolo Piccioli

Pierpaolo Piccioli is an Italian fashion designer and couturier whose career has combined accessory development, large-scale luxury management and an emotionally direct approach to haute couture. Born in Rome in 1967 and raised in Nettuno, he studied literature before training in fashion and joining Fendi’s accessories department in 1990 alongside Maria Grazia Chiuri.

Piccioli and Chiuri moved to Valentino in 1999, became co-creative directors in 2008 and built the Rockstud into a major commercial system. After Chiuri left in 2016, Piccioli led Valentino alone, expanding its colour vocabulary, monumental volume, inclusive casting and public recognition of atelier labour. He left the house in 2024 and became creative director of Balenciaga in July 2025.

His first Balenciaga collections, The Heartbeat and ClairObscur, introduced lighter structure, colour and eveningwear ahead of his first couture presentation for the house.

Piccioli treats colour and volume as emotional structure. Silk faille, organza, gazar, taffeta and drape produce large forms that appear mobile rather than armoured, while monochrome can remove distraction and expose cut, light and surface. The wearer is intended to remain visible inside the spectacle of the garment.

His couture practice also rejects the myth of solitary authorship. Atelier workers are named, brought onto the runway and treated as part of the public identity of the collection. At Balenciaga, that humanist method meets a house built on severe tailoring and exact distance from the body, producing a current vocabulary of Neo Gazar, softened monumentality and cinematic light.