There were great expectations about Giambattista Valli's Autumn/Winter 2009-10 “Wintertime” pre-collection for two main reasons: this was the only proper catwalk show at Florence's Pitti W_Woman Precollection, the Pitti Immagine event dedicated to womenswear, and it was also the first show Valli ever held in Italy, a world première that took place in the historical and magnificent Salone dei Cinquecento of the Palazzo Vecchio in Piazza della Signoria.
I already mentioned in a previous post how, as a child, Valli’s imagination was piqued by the costumes worn by Claudia Cardinale in Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, yet for his Autumn/Winter pre-collection Valli focused on very different cinematic references.
The designer took as his ideal muses the stylish and chic actresses featured in Michelangelo Antonioni’s films, from Eleonora Rossi Drago and Yvonne Furneaux in The Girlfriends to Lea Massari in The Adventure.
These are important references: as I explained in two previous posts, the Italian director charged fashion in his first films with sociological connotations, but, as the years passed, introspective Antonioni focused on more existential themes, articulating his characters’ inner troubles through the colours and shapes of their clothes.
This is why in Valli’s elegant demi-couture black dresses with velvet capes, ample satin sleeves or cascades of ruffles, there were strong echoes of the “chic existentialism” that characterised Antonioni’s beautiful and enigmatic women in The Night or The Eclipse and of his muse, actress Monica Vitti.
Dark colours – especially black – borrowed from Antonioni prevailed throughout the collection, but there were also hints at the leopard furs worn in a couple of films from the 50s by Antonioni's actresses.
Apart from this cinematic reference, Valli also used two other inspirations, the past and the future. The former was represented by Florence conceived as the city of art and craftsmanship. Some of the colours used by Valli - such as red - were borrowed from Renaissance painters, while his satin coat dress was a reference to Pontormo’s painting “Portrait of a Lady in Red Dress”. There were also glamourised versions of Savonarola’s humble capes, transformed in cocooning coats or in cropped jackets and sculptured shoulder pieces.
In his designs Valli also referenced Florence as the city of fashion: it was here that Giambattista Giorgini organised the first catwalk in the early 50s at the Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti. This reference was detectable in the silhouettes of some dresses and leopard coats, while the future entered in the collection with style references to Valli’s contemporary icons, Marella Caracciolo, wife of Gianni Agnelli, and Margherita Missoni, scion of the Italian knitwear dynasty.
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