There s something about Giambattista Valli s clothes that is so fundamentally optimistic, they ve got you at hello. Maybe it s the va-va-voom echoes of Rome in the sixties, a quintessential dolce vita moment that resounds through the decades. With today s show, it wasn t like the outfits themselves were retro, but there was a kicky energy that felt like it might have come from bright young things getting dressed up and following Valli, their pied piper, through noble streets to a hole in the wall where they d have a hell of a time. Two words: "short" and "flat." As in dresses and shoes. We should probably add "sheer" to that list, because a Valli girl is shameless in her pursuit of pleasure.
As for Valli himself, his mind was on higher things—sort of. Remember the three R s from the school days of old: readin , ritin , rithmetic? Valli has four new ones all his own: romantic, rebel, rock, royal. He d been to the Petit Trianon, where Marie Antoinette went to feed chickens when she felt like some downtime, and he got caught up in the notion of a privileged wild child stretching her wings. Picture a hybrid of front-row fixture Bianca Brandolini d Adda and Debbie Harry, high and low. That s how Valli could whip an eveningwear bubble from petals of organza and poplin and pair it with a white shirt (its silver pocket an artful stand-in for jewelry) and a pair of sandals. Or collage leopard, lamé, and hot orange into a chic mini-shift.
The Petit Trianon gave him the idea for the Baroque stucco prints he used, and the marbled floors at Versailles inspired the Vichy check, but it was ultimately Valli s own roots in the alta moda of Rome that sent him into the citron stratosphere that helped the show to its close. Ball gowns at breakfast? Valli s your man.
