ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories: From wonderful Snake Bangles by Giambattista Valli

Sunday, October 16, 2011

From wonderful Snake Bangles by Giambattista Valli

Paris Fashion Week - Giambattista Valli Spring/Summer 2012

For many designers in Paris or anywhere really, one collection is enough. For whatever reason - intellectual curiosity, creative challenge, or just glutton for punishment - Giambattista Valli loaded two more on his plate this year: haute couture and a capsule line for Macy's. But rather than allow the workload to overwhelm him, Valli claims it kept his natural tendencies in check. "Sometimes I have too many ideas and to few collections," he admitted a few days before the show. "So having all those projects actually brought me focus." Enjoy Giambattista Valli Spring/Summer 2012 Fashion Show at the end of this post.

Giambattista Valli reported on his Fall/Winter 2011/12 collection - Bursted with specimen flowers, taken from seventeenth-century Flemish still lifes and emblazoned across Giambattista Valli's crisply linear clothes, pointed to the designer's inspiration of the season. "I wanted a contemporary Girl with a Pearls Earring," he explained, referring to Johannes Vermeer's exquisitely enigmatic portrait, "playing with the light and darkness of the painting."

That much was clear from his spring collection: a tight run of pretty, exuberant party looks that felt completely Valli. His inspiration was world travel, so he mixed and matched sorbet-colored, metallic tapestries into color blocks on short shifts and glamorous jackets where they aligned with panels of fur. There were a cute, short gladiator-like dresses in white chiffon with medaillons, the pleats perfect for shimmying on a banquette in Ibiza, and flirtier numbers with silk frings that, with its volume and movement, felt particularly signature.

And, I personally must say - I LOVE THESE SNAKE BANGLES!!! For me a 'must-have' for next summer (!), but take your own impressions on this fabulous collection ... LoL, Andrea

Glamorous jet-set women who have inspired Valli since he launched his business nearly seven years ago. They range from the intimitably chic of Lee Radziwill to Jessica Biel to daughters of fashion dynasties (Delfina Delettrez Fendi and Margherita and Teresa Missoni). Eugente Niarchos making a black T-shirt and ripped cutoffs look like the epitome of style, seemed to be shopping from her seat. The long white column dress with yellow, green, and metallic accents that she pointed at as it passed her by in the finale.

The designer has recently unveiled his first Parisian boutique, - a beautiful appointed enfilade of shops in an early-nineteenth-cenury arcade a stone's throw from the well-heeled Rue Saint-Honoré, and perhaps the new-born merchant in him encouraged a pragmatic approach. Valli wanted to evoke a time when chic women "went to the couture to buy daywear - so, all the richness of the collection is for daywear ..."