Giambattista Valli could not host a presentation this season due to the coronavirus pandemic. In these extenuating circumstances, Vogue Runway has made an exception to its policy and is writing about this collection via photos and remote interviews.
“If they’re coming to me, they want the best of me.” That was Giambattista Valli earlier today on a Zoom call from Paris, hours before his fall 2020 haute couture collection would be unveiled via a video starring Joan Smalls. True to his word, the new collection is signature Giamba. There’s no COVID-time second-guessing of his instincts—no economizing on silk tulle or scaling back of faille and taffeta bows. If anything, the tulle tiers are frothier, the bows more voluminous. A face-covering mask could’ve been a nod to the pandemic, but in black chiffon it was more decorative than functional.
Smalls models the collection’s 18 looks in the video, and in the split-screen next to her, scenes of Paris in winter are revealed. “With or without us, nature was going on,” Valli remarked of the months we spent under lockdown. “In the horror of what we’re passing through, there was beauty blooming at the same time.” On day one of this digital couture week, nature is a recurring motif, as is the human desire to get out into it. It may be irrational exuberance on our parts, but it is exuberance which is better than its opposite, and after months of restrictions, this kind of pleasure seeking is hardly a surprise. Even before the collection made its online debut, Valli had two virtual orders. “Happy times are never going to be démodé,” he said. He also has the advantage of a very young clientele; “they’re used to buying on the web,” he added.
As his bride, Smalls wears a strapless dress of ruched ivory tulle decorated with a pair of black bows that match the one that accents her cathedral-length veil of polka-dot embroidered tulle. Valli was eager to highlight the couture techniques of each piece—from a sequin minidress and its many-layered point d’esprit cape to a white ballgown decorated neckline to hem in lipstick-red feathers—and he proudly announced he was able to retain all of his employees during the shutdown and the reopening that’s followed. Amidst this ongoing crisis, that really is cause for happy times.
