Pineapple is having a moment. Aside from the various equator-hugging locales of big-ticket destination shows (Rio, Havana, et al.), the recent warming of relations between the U.S. and Cuba, and the obvious connotations of Resort season as requiring a tropical location, there were printed versions of the fruit that popped up at Valentino, jacquard iterations at House of Holland, pineapples embroidered or patchworked together at Rosie Assoulin, and then today at Giamba, a pair of the spiky-skinned fruits painted on a white denim miniskirt. It’s safe to assume that come November, there will be ample ways to sate your craving for tropical flavor. For further fruit-basket filling, Giamba also had a white shirt with embroidered bananas on the collar, and a banana-print organza dress that turned graphic and abstract when pleated. Compared with designer Giambattista Valli’s Pre-Fall Pop Art celebration of movie theater candy (inspired, as it turns out, by an early 1990s Moschino Jeans print), fruit, and the natural world beyond it, was a step in a more wearable direction. This latest addition to Valli’s effervescent, youth-oriented line was influenced by bright young things native to the West Coast, relayed the label’s PR, the kind who thrive on see-and-be-seen social media platforms like Snapchat (and who, it goes without saying, have multiple uses for tiny white lacy frocks in December).
One of Snapchat’s most successful filters superimposes a cartoon dog’s face over the user’s. There’s always been something charming about a refusal to take oneself too seriously, and Giamba has never been a particularly serious line. These are clothes to have fun in, from the flamboyance of flamingos, as seen on an embroidered sleeveless sweatshirt top, skinny jacquard trousers, and a variety of floaty, off-the shoulder smocked hippie dresses; an ambush of tigers tattooed on distressed pin-striped white denim and tuxedo shirts; a pandemonium of parrots printed on tiny pink hot pants; and at least one black motorcycle jacket. And then there were the flowers, which sprawled across nearly everything else loose and lacy, and also, as so happens in nature, hosted quite a few bees. The moral here? Junk food is fun, but the crash comes on quickly; in the long run, we all know that what’s natural is best. Nowhere was this better communicated than in the elegantly interesting 3-D silk embroidered flower buds that adorned the collars and belted waists of some frilled blouses and Valli’s covetable-as-ever baby doll dresses.
