Pierpaolo Piccioli is a guy who gets on a plane to seek out his heroes and heroines. Not content with pinning printouts of inspirational pictures on a mood board in the usual fashion, he goes to the trouble (and the Valentino bankrolled expense) of going to the living source, and starting a conversation. For Spring, which was Piccioli’s first solo womenswear collection, he went to London to persuade Zandra Rhodes to collaborate on new prints (a smash hit). Previously, Valentino has commissioned ’70s photographic greats David Bailey and Sarah Moon. This time, he went to Liverpool to look up Jamie Reid, the graphic designer who worked with the Sex Pistols, who offered Piccioli usage of two pertinent-to-now slogans that ended up sewn to the backs of Valentino’s menswear coats and on baseball caps. One: “Beauty is a birthright, reclaim your heritage.” Two: “It seemed to be the end, until the next beginning.”

One way and another, the condition of the world, and of masculinity itself, is inescapably under discussion in this cycle of shows. Piccioli said his route is to look for optimism, to measure change in the long perspective. “I loved punk as a state of mind—anarchy of the mind,” he said. “Men have definitely changed more than women in the last two decades. I started this collection by going back to the idea of the gentleman. To me, today it means to be a gentle man. Gentleness is an expression of freedom. Expressing your fragility is the new strength.”

In practice, that step forward manifested in a collection strong on a huge variety of Valentino outerwear. It ran from ankle-grazing duster coats to capes, windowpane-checked car coats to duffles, mackintoshes, and multiple iterations of short, boxy jackets. The color palette took in pinks, mint, camel, and riffs on the tweedy English-trad spectrum—a multitude of expertly collaged shades, which were also reflected in the massively successful Valentino sneakers Piccioli has developed over time. There was a differently colored pair of sneakers allocated to each young model who walked this runway. Shoes are just shoes, yet somehow, that spectrum of choice seemed to allude to the generational individualism in which Piccioli finds hope.