“Don’t be scared of beauty,” Giambattista Valli declared before his show. “Sometimes people don’t know how to handle things that are really beautiful.” He didn’t spell it out, but his statement—also printed over a backstage mood board collaged from floral boudoirs, palatial gardens and pretty porcelain—felt like an eye-roll to a fashion climate where romanticism is often deemed cliched. With the exception of couture shows, the industry and its followers can be a bit emotionally unavailable. Certainly, if you want street cred in fashion, waxing lyrical about “ugly cool” is a safer bet than effusing about neat floral dresses.
“There are some that can do it very well,” Valli said, referring to a different kind of fashion to his own, “but not everybody has to like that. There are different facets to fashion, and I think I’m very strong in this one.” Returning to the runway, it felt like he wanted to remind us what he’s about. A sucker for romance, Valli is a dying breed in a fashion world obsessed with catering to the supposedly subversive tastes of the new generations. Plenty of those kids have the same princess dreams many have had for centuries, and Valli is here to answer their calls.
His collection was a young and fresh take on classic romanticism—little light jacquard suits that looked like watercolor flowers, featherweight flouncy pink dresses, and bouncy plumed cocktail numbers—but infused with the sex-positive attitude of a new generation. That side of things manifested not least in a panting soundtrack, but also in body-centric looks comprised of crop tops and full skirts, barely-there peasant mini dresses, or transparent ruffled evening gowns that left little to the imagination. “I like the idea of new feminism: girls, who have the power to be girls, in heels and T-shirts, almost naked, free to be themselves and not hidden,” Valli said.
This designer knows what his fans want: the well-fixed young romanticists who keep in touch with him through social media. “All this time we spent in joggers and hoodies,” he paused. “Now, I can sense my customer wants something extraordinary.” Taking over the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris—which houses some of his favorite Picabias—Valli wanted to stage an intimate experience to go with his philosophy of beauty: something effortless and undemanding. “People do huge venues with enormous decors where you see the collection from far away. Me, I like intimacy: being seated next to the clothes,” he said.
If you attended the show with the mindset of a contrasting brand, wanting—if not expecting—to see something hard and “wrong” and provocative, clearly Valli’s collection wouldn’t be your season highlight. But for the clients, who lined the row across from Vogue’s, decked out in their Valli confections like pearls on a string (and for the likeminded global audience that will tune in online) this was just the light, delicate, frothy, sexy beauty to satisfy those post-pandemic desires.
