If you haven’t heard of French fashion designer Giambattista Valli, he’s the man behind Jessica Biel’s pink wedding dress confection, which started the pink wedding dress trend. He loves copious amounts of tulle, saccharine colors and floral appliqués, but his designs are somehow never too precious or contrived—making him a go-to designer for cool fashion girls like Diane Kruger, Emma Stone and Margherita Missoni.
His couture looks have an accessibility that’s often lacking from the world of hoity-toity haute couture. Take this morning, for example. Karl Lagerfeld showed his signature tweed peplum suits and feather-topped dresses for Chanel (though they were given a slight edge with some fauxhawks and flat sandals). The looks were directional, as couture always should be, but they were also mature, made for a woman of a certain age—think Anna Wintour or Diane Sawyer.
No so for Valli, who presents a new guard for couture. His girl is the girl who all the cool girls want to be—partying in a garden, looking effortlessly chic, quaffing copious amounts of champagne, and generally not giving a eff about how unconventional or crazy she may look while doing so. In fact, that's the whole point.
"The secret of my girls is that they're always eccentric," Valli told Style.com before his show yesterday. "They don't play it. They are."
During his show yesterday, Valli took cues from pajama dressing and was also inspired by Spain’s Moorish Alhambra gardens. That translated to menswear striped separates mixed with sheer column dresses, decked in colorful flowers. Models were styled in what is sure to be the new must-have hair and beauty street style look for the end of the summer—a white handkerchief knotted at the crown of the head and clear, retro sunglasses.
Valli also undoubtedly started a new bridal trend—silky, piped pajama shirts tucked into ombré voluminous tulle shirts (a little salute to Sharon Stone in her Gap men's shirt from the the 1998 Oscars). Eccentric brides—start your Pinterest boards now!
Image: Instagram
