VALENTINO, PLEASE!

Cat walk report for the Valentino SS19 Haute Couture show

As the queen of pop music miss Britney Spears once said in her 2007 masterpiece Circus : “There’s only two types of people in the world, the ones that entertain and the ones that observe”. And that is exactly what I thought watching the Valentino Haute Couture show this past January. Designer Pier Paolo Piccioli definitely entertains the world but more importantly: he beautifies it.

“You don’t invent color,” said Piccioli, “but you can invent new harmonies for color.” Every single look of the show was so breathtakingly beautiful they even made Celine Dion burst into tears. I will not be surprised if she writes a song called “My Valentino gown will go on”.

The show transported us into a parallel universe where fairies float among us eating dessert and sipping champagne. I couldn’t help but think… “PLEASE SOMEONE THROW A TEA PARTY SO I CAN WEAR ONE OF THESE LOOKS!” or maybe even a tiny “I’m definitely wearing that coat to my trip to the rainforest in Peru this summer.” Every single look was extraordinary thought out from head to toe and they all had a complex color palette: brown, mint and coral, mauve, white and orange… and not even surprisingly: they all worked wonders!

I don’t believe in modernist couture, I love couture for what it is, the lightness, the uniqueness.” Expressed the designer on an interview. It was not a modern show, that we can say. It was a tender kiss back to when High Fashion actually meant something: It was elegant, light and simply stunning.

Apparently, the 65 looks of the show were named after Flowers and some of the models had petals in their eyes, literally transforming them into freaking flowers themselves, making me want to take one home, put her on my window and water her every few days or so until she experiences a sad yet beautiful death caused by my inability to keep things alive and maybe, simply maybe, my hatred and envy for her unspeakable beauty. (went a little dark there but as snow white’s step mother’s anger, it’s completely justified.)

The workmanship of the collection is something people are going to talk about for years. Everything from the design to the casting of the model shows a huge amount of dedication, talent and sweat. There was a gown, a silk organza gown that allegedly took seven hundred hours of work and that is a fact that is very worth considering. (the fact that I cannot imagine myself working for seven hundred hours is also another fact but unimportant in this case, just thought I’d mention it).

The models in the show were casted beautifully, from Icons like Naomi Campbell to new comers such as Ugbad Abdi who made her runway debut and looked STUNNING in a bright orange gown with lavender creped cape.

Gabardine pants and crepe blouses made a comeback on the show and it’s true that I do not care for them but they made a quite alright addition to the collection to say the least.

There was another look that I also did not care for and it was this set of neon orange pants with a feathered top with a cape or whatever, It just looked like Big Bird got a haircut and went shopping at Harrod’s with a stolen American Express.

The show made me think of a garden, or even: a fountain, the fountain of youth to be more precise. It reeked of purity and fields of tulips, maybe even little girls falling down rabbit holes, Tinkerbell’s best friends, A picnic in the Petit Trianon at Versailles… Almost everything at once! It made a beautiful yet messy impact in my head.

I heard one show goer say that instead of counting sheeps that night she counted every celebrity on the front row. Even Oscar-winner Rami Malek was there, what was he doing there? No one knows but he was and seemed to be having a good time. Also it seemed that Courtney Love stepped out of her grave and into the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild to watch the show.

Valentino Garavani himself also sat on the front row and looked very pleased with his successor.

To say the least, Anyone who is anyone was there.

People might say it can be basic to do Florals for spring but Pier Paolo Piccioli took it to a whole other level (of course, as mentioned before, Celine Dion’s tears were proof of all the excellence and all the emotion of his collection). Yes, florals for spring may be far from groundbreaking but not for this dude!

In conclusion, It was a fairytale dream come true. Elegance met femininity, radiance. It was an escape from the horrible depths of the actual world and into dream world. And, for me, one of the best shows of the season.