Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema was a Victorian
painter who liked to depict archaeological fantasies of scantily draped
girls lounging around Roman villas. Had he been alive today and at the
Valentino couture show, he’d hardly been able to contain himself. Every
one of the looks Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli
sent out were inspired by the works of Pre-Raphaelite painters and
poets, but first among them was a white draped tunic dress named after
Alma-Tadema’s sultry study of a sleeping nymph, The Siesta, of 1868.
Forget
historical exactitude, though. This collection was about a pair of
Roman fashion designers conjuring up lyrical impressions of the ancient
Imperial days of their own city, and building them into a new fantasy,
from the delicately cross-laced Roman sandals up. “It’s our past we’re
thinking about,” said Chiuri. “Something graceful, regal and a bit more
pagan, this time.”
The clever combination of romance and
relevance that is coming out of Valentino these days seems completely
instinctive and unforced. On the one hand, there’s a grounded sense of
how young women want to dress (it’s pretty handy that Chiuri has her
eighteen-year-old daughter Rachele for reality checks) and on the other,
there are the superb technical abilities which put the house in the
category of up-there-on-clouds excellence.
That sensible sensibility has
already brought the long, lace Renaissance-inspired dress to fashion.
It continues for fall with breathtakingly complex silver beaded
embroidery, trailing in layers, and wondrous gilded gowns with tabard
bodices.
But the new thing is simplicity—or rather, silhouettes
which are unencumbered by any surface decoration. It’s a truism in
fashion that these things are even more difficult to accomplish than any
amount of froth and beading. Yet there’s absolutely no panic about that
at Valentino.
The stark, noble toga dresses and subtly dramatic
constructs of draped and knotted silk in this collection carry the
hallmarks of perfectionism that has been native to this house ever since
Mr.
Valentino Garavani set it up in the fifties. The upshot: What we’re
seeing here is the gradual reaching out to different kinds of women—or
maybe it’s the same women, in a different mood.
And whichever way we
look at it, Chiuri and Piccioli are turning their Roman couture fantasy
into business reality. Such is the success of their work that they say
they’ve taken on 30 more people in their couture ateliers to meet the
growing demand.
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