Giambattista Valli rejects any implication that this collection is a second line. On the phone from Paris this morning—from the middle of a fitting for Moncler Gamme Rouge—he called Giamba a “sister” to the collection he shows in Paris.
Okay, if Giamba has parity with GV, why only hold a buyer-fine but writer-useless, clothes-on-rails resee situation? Valli replied reasonably that he did four seasons of Giamba shows to characterize the line, then added that Milan is already crowded enough with shows (true) and that both buyers and editors had responded positively to this straightforward, no-drama format when he introduced it—I was told then as a one-off—last season.
For reviewing purposes, however, this format is too skeletal to flesh out with informed rhetoric, which is why Valli kindly called in. Because if the designer isn’t going to speak about the work, or express his or her point of view—to provide creative context—through a show or curated presentation format, then all we have is a pile of fabric. We might as well just be shopping.
Here, the pile was fine enough. One advantage of clothes on the rail is you can inspect the labels and give them a good stroke, tug, and scrunch: You could observe through the materials used that this made-in-Italy collection would have a cheaper price point than its shown-in-Paris sister. The mix of boho broderie, print, disco sequins, retro Fame cotton and jersey pieces, and faded, frayed denim was handled as adroitly as you would expect from this designer. Valli talked about “a Brooklyn boho girl who travels, is nomadic” as his imagined character—perhaps the little sister to his made-in-Paris customer, or the same woman in lower-wattage context. Maybe Giamba deserves a presentation in Paris on the same day as its sister line; why give all the glory to one sibling and leave the other hanging forlornly in a showroom?
