Fifty-five looks for fifty-five operas. The Valentino designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli were after something new for Couture this season, and they found it in the age-old tradition of opera. The show opened with a nod to La Traviata; Giuseppe Verdi s score was embroidered in black on the long, full skirt of a parchment-colored tulle dress. After that, Chiuri explained, "we wanted to describe the character of each [opera s] protagonist in a primordial way." By the end, they had called out all the greats: Puccini s La Bohème inspired an elegant navy cashmere cape and silk crepe sheath. Bizet s Carmen produced a pleated bronze tulle gown with silver-gray guipure lace embroideries.
Admittedly, the connections were sometimes tenuous, but that didn t detract from the austere beauty of simply draped silk marocain dresses in earthy shades of sienna, green, and mahogany. Or the divine splendor of a gold thread dress embellished with four thousand smoky gemstones that took twenty-five hundred hours to affix. The monastic and the regal are the twin signatures of Chiuri and Piccioli s work chez Valentino. Both sides of that aesthetic presumably appeal to Florence + the Machine s Florence Welch, who was perched near Giancarlo Giammetti in the front row.
The surprise was all the animals—a veritable menagerie of them, or as the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns would ve had it, a carnaval des animaux. A swan, a snake, and a peacock made from feathers that wrapped around the waistline of ballerina tutus…lions and elephants on a double-face cashmere dress and a coat (not embroidered, mind you, but built into the fabric of the garments, like a puzzle)…even a gorilla and its baby were spotted tucked amid the leather floral appliqués of an organza cape.
The creativity of the set dressers at the Rome Opera House had a profound effect on the duo this season; Chiuri and Piccioli invited the opera s artisans to paint the show s runway and backdrop. But if theatricality is a virtue onstage, the more realistically the creatures were rendered here, the better off the clothes were. By contrast, a satin tiger practically pounced off the skirt of the finale dress. The workmanship was second to none, but the designers may have overestimated the big cat s charms. All in all though, this was another bravura performance.
