Paris Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2011/2012: Giambattista Valli

On Monday, the haute couture shows opened in Paris. Intermittently the demise of haute couture is postulated, since only three hundred — maybe more or less; this writer heard or saw this figure once and never saw it again — women in the world have the finances, inclination and daring to wear it; this year there have been no ominous forebodings.

Excitement ran at a feverish pitch even among those who follow scandals rather than fashion closely, since the house of Dior showed its first haute couture collection not masterminded by the Briton John Galliano. (Dior announced that it was firing the designer on March 1st; he is still being prosecuted for racist insults.)

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A second first was Giambattista Valli's inaugural haute couture collection, which was displayed in a small old-fashioned corridor in the Galerie de la Madeleine. The guests sitting in the two single rows of gilded chairs included Daphne Guinness, Bianca Brandolini, Olivia Palermo, Shala Monroque, Tatiana Santo-Domingo, and the editor of Vogue USA, Anna Wintour. (On July 1st Charlotte Casiraghi, the daughter of Monégasque Princess Caroline and frequenter of fashion shows, wore one of his designs during the wedding festivities for Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock.)



The models strolled down the dully gleaming tile floor in a twilit gloom. While Valli mentioned that the blouse de cabine inspired his work*, and his worldly, loosely tied white shirtwaists bore it out, his elegant dresses were at times reminiscent of Russia in the early nineteenth century. There were belts of flat shining leaves clasping the waist, or paired chains of jewels arranged like flowers in gilded settings; the austere make-up and bandeaux which the models wore on strained-back hair were a little balletic and a little old-fashioned working-woman; and there were dresses cut from white cloth with a graceful grey and black floral motif, which were as majestic as brocade. The silhouettes were neat and formally flaired.

I tend not to notice the shoes. The ones I glimpsed were pretty, frilly, bright-coloured monochromatic heels. Their toes were closed — windows in the tip of a shoe, where two toes squish out like the two sides of a hoof, look I find particularly abominable — and the heels not like stilts.

* Style.com's Tim Blanks: "Valli celebrated the past when he used the white poplin shirtdress—the blouse de cabine—of the atelier worker as a building block."

A design house which influenced the collection was, I think, Chanel, in the decorously cut white jackets and skirts, fringed at the edges and tufted like snowflakes. Secondly, though Valli brought in a pinkish watermelon red tint for his designs, he also picked out a fiery, geranium-like Valentino red for one or two.

Tim Blanks offers that this is a reference to the Catholic tradition in Giambattista Valli's native Italy;

He even paraded a penitent, a woman in an ostrich-feather sheath swathed in a black lace veil. But, more to the Vatican-friendly point, Valli also proposed a shot of red, like Valentino before him. Perhaps it's no wonder couture-inclined designers from Rome love red. You could almost say it's by papal decree.

There were leopard print dresses; one or two designers pretend that this print can be intelligent and aesthetically refined every season, so its vogue is perennial whatever one might privately think of it. Two of them were assigned to black models; as Jezebel.com writers have often pointed out, twinning African animals or "tribal" motifs with African models is shopworn, sloppy, and limiting. One of the other spectacles was a pink gown; it was especially praised on Vogue.de, while this spectator christened it "Attack of the Sea Coral."*

The critical reception at Style.com and Vogue.de and the New York Times's T Magazine was favourable. "Expectations were high," wrote Beatrice Graf in the brief Vogue.de review, and concluded, "But the first conceptions on the catwalk already showed that Giambattista Valli has mastered not only ready-to-wear, but also the craftsmanship of haute couture."***

("Die Erwartungen waren hoch" . . . "Aber schon die ersten Entwürfe auf dem Laufsteg zeigten, dass Giambattista Valli nicht nur Ready-to-Wear, sondern auch das Handwerk der Haute Couture beherrscht.")

Sally Singer of T wrote, "Giambattista Valli’s first collection of haute couture promised and delivered everything his following of young European monied beauties desire: dollops of feathers, pearls, embroideries, animal prints, flowers, ruffles, and bows. It all worked, even more so than Valli’s ready-to-wear, because for unapologetic prettiness he is unbeatable, especially in the simplest gestures [. . .]".

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Vogue France's website offers the times of the haute couture runways;**** the very first was Anne Valérie Hash, and the very last will be Azzedine Alaïa (who has not presented couture in over a decade) on July 7th. The final ceremony sounds grandiose; "This year, the closing cocktail party, which was formerly held at the Cercle Interallié, is being planned for the Grand Trianon at Versailles, inaugurating an exhibition devoted to the influence of the 18th century on contemporary fashions."****

(Cette année, le cocktail de clôture qui avait anciennement lieu au Cercle Interallié, s’organise au Grand Trianon, à Versailles inaugurant une exposition consacrée à l’influence du XVIIIe siècle sur la mode contemporaine.)

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"Haute couture" [Wikipedia] (Read July 6, 2011)
"John Galliano" [Wikipedia.fr]
"Giambattista Valli Haute Couture" [Vogue Germany], by Beatrice Graf (June 10[sic], 2011)***
"Giambattista Valli - Haute Couture Autumn 2011 Runway - Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week" [Getty Images]** A photo of and supplementary information for the coral-pink gown.
(Details of dresses, venue, and attendants gathered from other photos and captions at Getty Images.)
"Giambattista Valli Fall 2011 Couture Collection: Runway Review" [Style], by Tim Blanks (July 4, 2011)
"Programme des défilés haute couture hiver 2011-2012" [Vogue France], by Eugénie Trochu ****
"Mr . Valli, Are You Ready For Your Close-Up?" [New York Times: On the Runway (Blog)], by Cathy Horyn (July 5, 2011)
"Now Screening - Giambattista Valli" [T Magazine] (July 4, 2011) Three-minute-long video of runway excerpts; music worth muting.