However popular—or populist—there are some fashions you really don’t want to subscribe to. As Giambattista Valli pointedly observed of his collection pre-show: “It’s the opposite of what is happening in Italy right now.”
Valli’s creative wellspring this season was the peripatetic pioneers of the 1970s who traveled to allow the culture of other places to broaden their outlook and heighten their art. Alighiero Boetti in Afghanistan, Francesco Clemente and Alba Primiceri in Pondicherry, and—more lately—Gabriella Crespi in her Himalayan eyrie were some of the examples stitched into this gilded, globalized melting pot of a collection. Although not a political designer—the truth Valli pursues is emphatically romantic: beauty, Keats-style—even he could not avoid comparing those outward-looking compatriots with his country’s inward-facing election results this week.
Valli’s core ruffled romantic was here in spades, certo, but this was a muse on the move. The opening denim dungarees (at Giambattista Valli!) worn over Mongolian flip-flops and printed pantyhose suggested the mix to come. A striped djellaba shirt under a cutely tailored British menswear check tailored suit; a skirt and top in that same stripe with an embroidered Rajasthani butterfly motif; some kaftan dresses and minis; plus a series of full-sleeved dresses featuring squared panels on the chest that Valli described as “tantric drawings” were more well-traveled assimilations. The brief aside of minidresses over thigh-highs was a flashback to Carnaby Street, and Valli wholeheartedly incorporated ’70s-touched Victoriana into his own practiced litany of prettiness. The fabrications were beautiful and inventive—if there’s any justice and they’re not just show shoes, the Mongolian sneaker should be a streetwear sensation—and the heavy emphasis on pants (even if often given the same multi-sequinned decorative density as his dresses) is an indication that Valli is broadening his own outlook.
Mark Twain put it best: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness . . . . Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” Our eyes traveled with Valli’s collection and were nourished by the journey.
