Valentino Celebrates 10 Years of Rockstud With New Collaboration Series
Photo: Imaxtree
The Rockstud has been a staple in Valentino's accessories offering since 2010. The now-infamous motif is meant to represent the "bugnatos" seen on palazzo-style buildings in Rome, where the brand's creative direction is based. And it's been a big part of Valentino's commercial success over the past decade, proving to be massively popular among celebrities, bloggers, press and consumers alike.
In 2014, on this very website, Lauren Sherman reported on the Italian fashion house's renewed popularity and the role accessories — and its Rockstud line, in particular — played in it. The following year, then-co-creative directors Pierpaolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri told Style.com that Valentino sales had doubled since the Rockstud was introduced.
However you feel about the motif itself (and its pervasiveness), it's been a winner for Valentino — and something the brand isn't backing down from. That much was clear at its Spring 2021 show, where Piccioli presented super-sized versions of the Rockstud on bags and shoes. On the consumer side, the interest is still there: On the shopping platform Lyst, searches for Valentino's Rockstud pieces are up 26%, year-on-year, over the last month; after the brand's most recent fashion week debut, page views on these items increased by 11% week-on-week.
In honor of its 10th anniversary this year, Valentino is doubling down on all-Rockstud-everything.
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Photo: Courtesy of Valentino
The fashion house announced a new series of collaborations with artists, creatives and other brands that reimagine the Rockstud, to be released over the course of the next few months. The first installment of Valentino Garavani Rockstud X, as the project is called, will be a "conversation" between Piccioli and British designer Craig Green.
"The project reflects the values of identity, inclusivity and community in which Pierpaolo Piccioli believes in," the brand said, in a press release. "Rockstud X becomes a white canvas for new imaginary landscapes."
"Pierpaolo Piccioli continues his process of resignification of the iconic codes of the Maison, where reality and dream, high and low, punk and bourgeois, couture and street cohabit," the statement continued.
Green's take on the Rockstud has yet to be revealed, but Valentino promises it's "the first many collaborations and contributions to the Rockstud celebration."
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