giambattista valli - spring 2007

As per my usual routine, I have been perusing the new collections as they post online. The fashion flock descended upon Paris last week, where designers from Karl Lagerfeld to Stella McCartney have been presenting their Ready-to-Wear collections for Spring 2007. Earlier this week I posted about Nicolas Ghesquière's collection for Balenciaga. Two of the collections that were presented yesterday really caught my attention. The first, Giambattista Valli -

I keep waiting for this guy to hit the stratosphere each season, and he has started to pick up some momentum, I think, over the past year or so. Everything that he does has an easy elegance, and a technical expertise to it - and I always get a very de la Renta vibe from his work. If I were to summarize his new collection, I would say that it's very de la Renta meets Cristobal Balenciaga meets McQueen - but in a way that is more original than inspired. It's obvious to me why his devoted clientele includes a timeless sophisticate such as Lee Radziwill.

Here is the official review of the collection from Style.com -

When shopping for a trapeze dress next season, you could do worse than seek out Giambattista Valli. Of the many designers who latched onto this new-again shape, he did it with the most finesse. To his critics, there's an old-fashioned lack of serious daywear—the kind that a well-remunerated woman might sport to a board meeting—in Valli's runway shows. To his fans, however, the couturelike finish of his big-occasion clothes—which ranged from egg-shaped frocks to pannier dresses for spring—is beyond reproach.

Take, they might argue, the lifelike roses that decorated one short black dress. Inspired by the abstract expressionist Alberto Burri, Valli burned their edges, so that they rustled like fallen leaves as they glided down the runway. "I wanted to portray an intellectual beauty," he said. And so, along those same lines, he requested permission from the Calder Foundation to reprint one of the artist's mobile paintings for an aptly airy bubble skirt that he paired with a collarless, belted jacket. And from art benefactress Peggy Guggenheim, he cribbed rococo sunglasses and pagoda hats.

The results skewed more precious than intellectual, but there was no quibbling with the beauty of Valli's mille-feuille organza meringues. If they will need a few extra inches added to their hems to make them red-carpet safe for the likes of Katie Holmes and Victoria Beckham, his front-row guests, that's a minor complaint and one easily solved by this technically accomplished designer.