Giambattista Valli made his debut on the highly exclusive Paris Haute Couture Week calendar in 2011, and his collection was so well-received that the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, the governing body that regulates who shows and who doesn’t during these dates, decided to make him a permanent member. Normally, brands enter as guests and undergo a trial period of over five years (that is, ten shows). Valli, who is also Italian, not French, achieved this with just two collections. “I like to think that what I do has that romantic but contemporary side. We have the youngest clients in Haute Couture, and I believe they come to us because we handle the idea of excellence and craftsmanship in a modern way,” explains the designer. In fact, he says, he doesn’t like to talk about the hours of work behind a couture dress, a resource very common among other houses that do this: “I have never liked to explain the meters of tulle, the hours of sewing… it bores me. Maybe I’ve spent six months thinking about a dress, but for me, it’s perfect when it has an energy and freshness similar to having done it in one night,” he says. The Italian produces absolutely everything in his Parisian studio, including his ready-to-wear line, “and of course what makes me happiest in the world is working with the masters of my workshop, but I don’t like museum pieces, I don’t want dust on my designs, I want things that are alive,” he comments.
Bridal Fashion Evolution
Valli has spent a week in Barcelona finalizing the details of his bridal fashion show, held last Tuesday as part of the Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week. He launched his bridal collection, ‘The Love Collection,’ in 2021, and it is the first time he presents it on the runway. “I do Haute Couture, so I have been making custom-made wedding dresses for incredible women for many years, but I wanted to open up to another type of audience,” explains the author of, among others, Carlota Casiraghi’s wedding dress, “I wanted something that had my identity but was more democratic.” Although the designs, as usual, require several fittings and are purchased by appointment, they have a lower price because they are not made to measure from scratch; they are an intermediate point between couture craftsmanship and factory production of ready-to-wear, “but aesthetically I make no distinctions. If I think about it, I believe that the collaboration I did with H&M is, for example, the most ‘couture’ thing I have ever done,” he comments on his alliance with the Swedish giant in 2019: “I thought about it and worked on it a lot precisely because I was given the opportunity to make garments that ordinary people still cherish and wear on the street.”
Diversity in Bridal Designs
Although his bridal designs partly retain his signature, such as his voluminous tulles or draped flowers, there are styles for all tastes: “the first collection was more experimental, the second was more focused on what my potential clients expected from me, and this third one is like an ABC of what making a wedding dress means to me,” he explains, while showing on his mobile phone a model trying on a white bodysuit with flowers on the neckline, “it’s the first look of the show, a bodysuit and a cape, why not? I’m not interested in rituals, I’m interested in the person getting married expressing themselves as they wish, whether it’s with a fairy tale design or in a pool with friends,” he says. “The new generations are not so interested in their wedding dress being trendy; their idea has more to do with a moment suspended in time, here each person’s fantasy operates. The last custom-made dress I made was inspired by Narnia.”
Approach to Fashion and Bridal Design
Giambattista Valli loves to combine fashion with bridal design, but he recognizes that they are very different jobs: “I don’t like to impose my criteria in either case, I think that’s the biggest mistake of some designers,” he comments, “but here I am more of a psychotherapist than a designer. First, sketching the idea, without having the client in front of me, I have to understand what their motivations are for calling me. Many clients come with ideas they have had since childhood, about how they imagined their wedding when they were little. But then those ideas have to be grounded. It’s a long dialogue. If they want my point of view, I’m going to be as honest as possible, but in the end, you have to understand that this is a unique moment for a person who is not me,” he explains.
