A Wearable Garden by Giambattista Valli Fall 2013 Couture

"Flowers and colors are what women want from me,"  Giambattista Valli said before his couture show his fifth, the program notes reminded us. "That's what I give them, but every time I get inspired by something different." The something different tonight was porcelain. A photograph of Valli's own Meissen porcelain decorated the back of his invitation; on the runway, he divided the collection into neat sections, each influenced by a different country's china. To start, a series of eight looks in Capodimonte white, their tone-on-tone embroideries setting a sweet, if not quite virginal note that for the most part continued through the other groupings. With its leggy, vertical silhouette, even the floor-grazing trumpet skirts were sheer this collection seemed to skew more toward Valli's twenty-something acolytes than to octogenarian fan Lee Radziwill.

Discover amazing 'Behind The Scenes' at Giambattista Valli Fall/Winter 2013/14 Couture 5, and get linked to the entire couture collection at the end of this post, so amazing! Love, Andrea

After Capodimonte was Wedgwood. The Valentino designers riffed on Delft pottery in March, so a blue and white embroidered evening coat, while vivid, felt a bit familiar. France's sanguine red Sèvres came next. A strapless dress in draped mousseline with three-dimensional poppy florettes on the bodice was more hot-blooded.

The multicolor Meissen-influenced embroideries were last, and they were the best. Red-tipped pink silk flowers cascading down one side of a tulle column were so lush they could've been real, and sprays of nearly-neon pink and yellow blooms on downy white gowns made you look twice. Luigi Scialanga's sculpted gunmetal belts, like twists of ribbon, accessorized many of the dresses. In this section they were gold-dipped, which reinforced Valli's theme beautifully.

Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories

Photo credit/Source: Courtesy of Giambattista Valli

More Valli Couture To Love ... 

'Haute Couture | Giambattista Valli Fall 2013 Couture' 

"Giambattista Valli was thinking of “porcelain goddesses” for his appropriately fragile and delicate haute couture show, its runway decorated with classical statuary draped in garlands of white hydrangea."

Photo via Instagram by @andreajankeofficial

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Haute Couture | Giambattista Valli Fall 2013 Couture

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Giambattista Valli was thinking of “porcelain goddesses” for his appropriately fragile and delicate haute couture show, its runway decorated with classical statuary draped in garlands of white hydrangea.

In a nod to Capodimonte, Italy’s royal Neapolitan ceramic workshop, Valli married that fragility exquisite appliqué of lace and massed groupings of organza carnations decorating the hem of a short, full skirt to the city’s famed menswear tailoring, with structured jackets made from an innovative shadowy organza and paper fabric that resembled the interlining used to create shape in a bespoke suit coat, and the playful effect of an “unfinished” sleeve, hanging from its shoulder seam as though picked up from the tailor’s table in mid-process, revealing a flash of flesh.

There was Wedgwood porcelain too, evoked in pretty rococo scrolls of white ribbon embroidery on that company’s signature clear sky-blue, and Meissen and Sèvres too, for picturesque decoration of tiny, multicolored blossoms scattered on diaphanous lace skirtsm Valli likened the effect to “winter flora in a winter greenhouse” and there was certainly a lightness here that evoked St. Petersburg’s white nights rather than a gloomy winter as well as chinoiserie scenes and three-dimensional butterflies that flitted across those icy blue skies and lighted on the blossoms. There were tunic effects suggested by short dresses worn over those clinging, trailing skirts; these elements can of course be separated to create the shapely little cocktail dresses for which Valli is celebrated. As ever, Luigi Scialanga’s beautiful jewels accented the softness with a tougher edge ribbon “belts” in tarnished steel, and tiaras with the neoclassical elements, including goddesses, putti, and crescent moons, similar to those used by the great late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century furniture makers to embellish their own spectacularly crafted creations.

Valli’s finale, of wafting, blossoming lace sheath dresses, was anchored by a dramatic trio of gowns in blocks of surprisingly potent color combinations like tropical birds let loose in his flowering conservatory.

Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accesssories 

Photo credit/Source: VOGUE

Photography by Yannis Vlamos / InDigitalteam / GoRunway

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'A Wearable Garden Couture by Giambattista Valli'

Amazing 'Behind The Scenes' of Giambattista Valli Fall 2013 couture

'"Flowers and colors are what women want from me,"  Giambattista Valli said before his couture show his fifth, the program notes reminded us. "That's what I give them, but every time I get inspired by something different." The something different tonight was porcelain.'

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'Haute Couture | DIOR Fall 2013 Couture' 

“I think it’s time to free couture,” declared Raf Simons as he came up from hugging a delighted Jennifer Lawrence amid the backstage melee of congratulations after his third Christian Dior couture show. “It annoys me that couture is thought of as the circus clown of fashion,” he continued. “What interests me is to get down to a more psychological level. To think about individuality, and the cultures women live in.”

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