For the Italian designer Pier Paolo Piccioli, 2024 was a year of transformation. It marked the end of an association spanning two and a half decades with the storied house of Valentino. Piccioli, who became the brand’s creative director in 2008, interpreted its aesthetic with an inventive fidelity, making it both a preferred choice for the red carpet and more accessible than ever before. The new innings marked a period of self-reflection and introspection, heightened by his maiden trip to India. He earnestly documented each step, from the Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj to the palaces in Jaipur. In February 2025, he spoke to Alia Allana to reflect on the colours of India, the freedom a wayward traveller can enjoy, and the power of photography.  

Did you ever research India for your work? Did it seep into your collections? 

Actually, no. But I can see now that I was probably processing images, books I had read, and movies. It’s as if I had India in my sensibility. It’s more than inspiration. I can’t say that there has been one collection inspired by India but it’s like my own aesthetic vision was already inspired by India, by its colour, the peaceful beauty. There was something, now I know, already within me.

How was your first day here?  

I went to Humayun’s Tomb [in Delhi]. I was amazed by the grandness and the contradiction between the people on the streets and the majestic nature of the tomb. I love this sort of contradiction between humanity now and what humans did in the past. I felt that it was another world. 

In the night I went to the Minara Masjid. I was shooting with three cameras: with my Leica, iPhone, and a kind of cheap Kodak film camera. There I took a picture I love. It was a girl in an orange cape outside the mosque. The men inside were praying, and she was praying alone. I think this is the power of images; in a moment you can catch the power of centuries of culture. You can get colour; you can get this little girl praying alone with all the men inside, and there was a beauty in all of that. Even when it’s not understandable to me —because to me it was incomprehensible that a woman was outside—I understood that I just had to record, understand, and not judge. Just witness. 

You jumped in at the deep end by heading to the Kumbh on your second day. 

Yes! That was not common, but it was a really immersive experience. I will say that it was a sort of treat. I was thinking of discovery, but in a way, for me, it was a rediscovery. It’s like I had already experienced all of that and I had a very strange feeling. India was a dream I had a long time ago.

From the first moment, I thought, “This is an adventure.” I never judged what I was living. I was too immersed in the moment, and I wanted to live it very deeply and not try to think through the lens of my own culture. I have to say that for me, this is the only way to get a culture or humanity. I think you have to be really open-minded to live exactly what you are facing.  

Colour is such a crucial component of your aesthetic. At the Kumbh, there was saffron everywhere. What are your thoughts on that? 

I have never thought of colours as symbols; I see them as emotions. Colours for me are emotional. Something to relate deep parts of yourself to, and not to the symbol that  society gives to the colours. To me they are personal, they are not social. It’s also very ‘of the moment’. I can see a colour one day and think of something, and at another moment I see the same colour but feel it in a different way. What I really understood at the Kumbh and during this trip is that things exist but it’s in the eyes, how you watch and look at things, that changes the meaning. 

It’s so personal, the way you perceive. Maybe I can see the same shade of orange and link it to different emotions. An orange I saw in Varanasi is probably different from the orange I saw in Jaipur because the emotion I felt was different. 

I recall you making an image of three men whose bodies were covered with flowers. You were captivated. 

That picture reminds me of a lot of stuff. It is a sort of painting to me. The naked bodies remind me of something like a renaissance. There were things that reminded me of my own culture. It was not to worry about nudity or perfection of the bodies. 

We were just witnessing a spiritual moment of these people, and with a picture you can get the beauty, the grace, the peace, the harmony that was happening. Even in the craziness, the madness of the moment, there was something graceful and beautiful in it. To me, that was the experience. I understood after the procession that it was also a performance, they were all together as one. You could see the energy, the positivity, the faith.

And Banaras made quite an impact on you. You mentioned finding beauty where you didn’t expect it. 

In Varanasi, I went to the burning ghats [in which cremations were taking place], and didn’t expect to see beauty but that’s what I found. Actually, it had to be sad, intense, moving. And it was all of this but it was also beautiful in a way, seeing it in the dark. It was around 8 pm, and I went there alone. The people were welcoming me, inviting me to come even closer, probably because I was a stranger and was curious. At the very end, looking at the picture that I took, I saw this dark moment of the ceremony, with the bells ringing and wrapped in the orange pieces of fabric. Seeing these bright colours in the dark with this kind of pink fire, with blue buildings at the back, there was harmony there. I found beauty in that, and I felt something intense. 

You know, for a Catholic person, the body is something you think of as supreme and then I understood there that the body was just a box for the soul. The important thing was what the body was freeing. The body was liberating the soul.  

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You made a lot of images. 

When you choose a frame, you choose that moment. That’s the moment you choose to live, you choose to keep for yourself, and that’s the way you find beauty. When you frame something which is part of a bigger picture, that’s your picture. In a way, that’s your way to see the world, to see what you’re attending and to see that moment so that you’re a part of the picture. I felt I was part of the picture.

Flowers play a very central role in Indian aesthetics. A woman wakes up in the morning, washes her hair and wears flowers. In your work, flowers play a big role too but it’s more of an Asian thing than a European thing. 

Yes, even I like flowers, as you said, putting them in your hair. It’s a human choice; it’s not like the decoration of a table. I am not interested in that kind of flower decoration. I like the mind that is there behind every choice and the feeling, the spontaneous choice. Even the naked body and covering it with flowers; there is something very human, very romantic, and it is very personal and not formal. 

Even the most common flower can be the most elegant one because of the human that gives it a sort of dignity in wearing it. It’s not about the richness or lushness of the flowers but about the gesture. To me, for sure that’s more Indian than European.

We saw so many men covered in flowers as garments, but we often ascribe notions of masculinity and femininity to these symbols. Isn’t this misplaced? 

It’s so personal. There was a moment where they adorn the body with flowers, and it was kind of fragile and strong at the same time because there was vulnerability, and the fragility of the flowers put on a body in such a strong, fierce way. In a way, it’s also very contemporary for the male figure; it’s not in the clothes that society decides for you but what you choose as a personal expression. Masculinity and femininity, the graceful beauty comes from inside, from yourself, your self-expression. It’s very individual, not very social.

You also understand that nudity has nothing to do with sexuality. When you are there at Kumbh, you see men and even female bodies covered with ashes and just a piece of fabric or flowers. There’s nothing close to sexuality, to seduction, it’s just natural. It’s like being without being seen. And so, the flowers are a self-expression and a way to decorate your body, not because you want to be seductive. 

Fashion is the manifestation of material culture. At the Kumbh, you’re experiencing the opposite end of the material realm. Does that make you question notions of materiality and immateriality? 

Yes, for sure, but I have always thought that beauty comes when you don’t show it, when it’s not too much in your eyes. I prefer something that is extremely light and looks super-simple but is not. I used to quote Mr Brancusi (Romanian sculptor and painter) who said “Simplicity is solved complexity”. So, the Kumbh is an arrival point, not the beginning point of something. And even for the material things, when you process all the stuff, you get something that just looks simple even if it is not. To me, that’s more elegant, it’s more part of style.

This interview has been edited and condensed for 

clarity.