by Sarah Mower

It's not exactly a Cinderella story, but the way two unpretentious accessories designers rose to reinvent the house of Valentino already has the aura of a fashion fairy tale about it. Since they took over as creative directors in 2008, the success of Maria Grazia Chiuri's and Pierpaolo Piccioli's gentle conversion of a storied couture house into a dynamic fashion business has "tripled or quadrupled" the company's profits.

All of that rests on the designers' shared passion for Roman art and culture, the value they place on traditional hand-crafting, their instincts for what young women love to wear, and—as we'll see below—inspiration fired by a burning resistance to the Berlusconi "bunga bunga" years.

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Source: http://www.vogue.com/