Grey Gardens' Little Edie was Giambattista Valli's muse for Resort. "I love her eccentricity, her extreme point of view," he said by phone from Paris, where he's preparing his Couture show. Albert Maysles' dotty heroine is a far cry from the European jet-setters who favor Valli's clothes, but if she was an unlikely influence, she was also an inspired one. The collection had a lot of verve, with airy floral prints, one of which came complete with bumblebees, a Jackson Pollock scribble (the artist was an East Ender, too), fluoro-brights, and plenty of Valli's favorite color, red.
Little Edie came through in the scarves tied over the models' scraped-back hair, the dresses over pants ("I don't like women in skirts," she famously said), and dresses and blouses with fluttery capelets built in. The animal-print Birks (the season's hottest shoe) aren't an Edie-ism, but she might've appreciated their irreverence. "Things are more ruleless for Resort," Valli said. He's always been known for his flourishes, but the more he embraces ease, the better his collections get. A T-shirt-and-long-bohemian-skirt combo, worn with those flat garden shoes, was probably the strongest look here. But to be sure, there was a lot of polish in the collection, too. One floral was printed on embroidered organza, and the lace dresses were lined with tulle underskirts. They created extravagant volumes evocative of what he does for Couture.
