Valentino unveils ‘Unboxing’ installations with renowned stylists

Valentino has launched a global ‘Unboxing’ campaign with installations in key cities, including London, New York and Shanghai, created by stylists Law Roach, Rebecca Corbin-Murray, and Anna Dello Russo.

Each of the stylists has interpreted Valentino’s spring/summer 2023 collection by creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli using their own aesthetic to create window displays in Valentino boutiques around the world to showcase the “limitlessness of creative impulse and execution”.

The ‘Unboxing’ project spans across the windows of eight Valentino Boutiques, including London, Paris, Milan, New York, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, and Dubai, as well as online. There will also be in-store activations and styling sessions across several locations, including London.

In addition, Valentino has partnered with GameOn Technology to offer a chat experience leveraging AI to enable global customers to experience the project remotely. Each stylist has also created a dedicated playlist on Spotify that will be streamed in the selected boutiques throughout the duration of their installation and linked via a QR code placed on a personalised cube within the window concept.

In London, Rebecca Corbin-Murray, stylist to Salma Hayek, has taken over Valentino’s Old Bond Street boutique, taking inspiration from the black catwalk look with yellow 3D flowers by projecting the yellow blooms as the backdrop to her four windows.

Valentino collaborates with stylists Law Roach, Rebecca Corbin-Murray and Mix Wei on in-store displays

While in New York, Law Roach the “image-maker” to Zendaya, who announced his retirement from celebrity styling last week, has decked the boutique in the brand’s signature red in homage to Valentino’s spring/summer 1992 campaign captured by Steven Meisel. Law has also covered a vintage car with the Valentino Toile Iconographe pattern.

Anna Dello Russo has created a cool aquamarine and gold fishtank in Dubai to highlight the brand’s collection of accessories with feathers, fluff, gloves and bags painting the mannequins like tropical fish.

Clement Lomellini has covered the Paris windows in Valentino Toile Iconographe pattern paper, with the mannequins wearing seductive black gowns appearing through torn backdrops to stage the drama of a physical unboxing.

In Milan, Lorenzo Posocco incorporates everyday scenes into his display at the boutique on Via Montenapoleone, capturing the relationship between the street scenes that pass by the windows every day and the becalmed world of the store within.

Mix Wei honours traditional Chinese painting in Shanghai by incorporating scrolls printed with the Valentino Toile Iconographe hanging from the ceiling to contrast with the outfits in solid, single colours. While in Seoul, Geum Nam Hwang highlights the puzzle of Soma cubes, and Masataka Hattori showcases natural, earth-tone Valentino looks in Tokyo.

The ninth display, conceived by styling duo Alexandra and Mackenzie Grandquist, exists online and y features mannequins suspended on elevated triangular platforms in a backdrop of intense red, the colour that expresses Valentino’s purest essence and calls back to its very beginning.