Giambattista Valli thinks that today privacy is the ultimate privilege. To emphasize the concept, he staged his couture show in his new headquarters, an intimate set of cream-carpeted rooms scented with rose petals scattered all around, with gilded chairs lining the walls like in an old fashioned, très chic salon de couture. “BuI I don’t like the word luxury,”he said backstage. “I prefer excellence.”
Valli is no reductionist, yet his collection harked back to a purist idea of haute couture. On his moodboard he plastered vintage black-and-white archival photos of ateliers in the ‘50s alongside recent images taken in the workshop of his actual maison. You couldn’t tell the difference of one from the other. “That’s because the idea of couture floats over the times, it doesn’t really belong to a specific era,” he said. “I believe that modernity is rooted in classicism.”
Going back to the essence of savoir faire, mastering the intricacies of the technique to achieve new weightless volumes, or boundary-pushing constructions: “It’s about the artistry that goes into making an exceptional garment,” he said. Every dress was conceived as if it were “a personality” in itself; silhouettes were distinct yet never contradictory, expressing character and singularity—fluid columns, billowy cupcakes, masterful flou drapings, structured crinolines. Reducing the palette to a precise color scheme—deep black, stark white, Bois de Rose and a few calibrated bursts of absinthe and silver—gave further clarity to his message, and keeping the styling neat added a note of concision.
Yet there’s always a certain Italian ebullience to Valli’s sensuous approach to couture, filtered by a Parisian flirty nonchalance. The opening look on Ella Richards, a black bustier dress with an asymmetrical crinoline lined by undulating volants in white organza, was a case in point. Revealing bare legs and worn with flat velvet ballerinas, it conspicuously activated the iPhones of Valli’s young “swans” in the front row. The finale on Olympia of Greece, a voluminous pale-pink merengue of rosettes in plissé tulle surmounted by a sequined heart-shaped bustier, was likewise a quintessential Valli creation: frivolous, fun, with a dash of impertinent je ne sais quoi.
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