Keep on daydreaming with Dior, Armani Privé and Valentino Haute Couture collections
Text by: Annarosa Laureti
When the Haute Couture Week ends we feel like melancholic lovers who have to say goodbye to their beloved half. We don’t have anything but those left-overs items, love letters, photos, strange but funny objects… that constantly take us back to the wonderful times gone.
Now, with a little bit of nostalgia, and while waiting for that magic night when we could finally rejoin our paramour – that of the Oscar ça va sans dire – we can reminiscing, even with a sigh and a little smile stolen.
Dior Spring Summer 2019 Haute Couture Collection
Is there anything more melancholic, and amusing at the same time, than a clown? Obviously not!
For these Spring Summer 2019 Haute Couture Collection the Dior fashion director Maria Grazia Chiuri decided to turn her models into jesters.
Recollecting Christian Dior’s passion for the Cirque d’Hiver (Winter Circus), the maison brought the fashion stage inside a real circus tent, starting a fashion carny parade.
Models of an unknown gender – “That clown is a man or a woman? Neither one nor the other. It’s a clown” said Sylvie Nguimfack-Perault in her “Le costume de clown blanc, Gérard Vicaire la passion pour seul habit” – showed long, and short like tutu as well, skirt, enriched with sequins details and precious embroideries.
All the circus codes are reinterpreted in the Couture way: black and red jackets refers to those one of the lion tamer; wide, super light and ankle tight-fitting pants remember acrobats’ outfits; and again gorgets and ribbons on transparent fine shirts – as well as the make-up and the net detail that covers models’ faces – gives a fashion twist to the classical clown’s figure.
The color palette stretches from bright tones of white, silver and beige to darker shades of blue and black. It cannot miss of course polka dots motif and colourful and à la marinière strips.
Also thanks to the wonderful performance of the female circus company “Mimbre”, Dior Haute Couture show was simply a wizardry, to look over and over again with children eyes.
Giorgio Armani Privé Spring Summer 2019 Collection
From the circus to the Chinese world, the leit motif of this Spring Summer Giorgio Armani Privé Collection is the laqué.
This wonderful and ancient art is transmuted into elegant – as always – pieces with a very déco soul: different motifs garnish the dresses, both geometrical and floral.
Inside the fresco rooms of the Hôtel d’Évreux in Place Vendôme, Armani Privé models walked on the notes of Bernardo Bertolucci’s movie “Il conformista” (The conformist), enlightening everything with their dresses, thanks to the lighting tricks created with lavish embroideries and crystals.
Precious leathers, leather varnishes, silks and organza silks are declined in tones of red – another file rouge of the collection – bluette, black and white and finally silver.
Fringe details enrich over-the-ankle dresses, skirts and kimonos as well. Pants, indeed, are little flared while jackets show very structural shoulders and line, and fine details on their inside.
Finally little caps with silk fringes and veil, as truly piece of jewellery, adorned this Giorgio Armani Privé woman, who has a bit cold allure like that of every self-respecting sophisticated woman.
Valentino Spring Summer 2019 Haute Couture Collection
The delicacy of a flower – as we previously saw in the Chanel SS 2019 Haute Couture Collection – embraces the classical Haute Couture vocabulary letting bloom a royal and hieratic collection.
For this Valentino Spring Summer Haute Couture Collection by Pier Paolo Piccioli, the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild was literary invaded by an explosion of frills, trims, fringes and colors’ blocks – coral, pink, purple, orange, bright yellow, green and obviously red – creating together extra voluminous pieces.
Blossoms are everywhere: embroidered in lace and crystals, reproduced like old-fashion wallpaper, still applied on models’ faces as make-up. Feathers around model’s eyes, in particular, become truly petals.
At the end of the day, it was a very romantic collection that captured the spectators also thanks to the incredible casting choice: from Mariacarla Boscono to Kaia Gerber, from Vittoria Ceretti to Liya Kebede, from Faretta to Natalia Vadianova. And finally the stunning Naomi Campbell, who closed the show like a medieval and sensual black Madonna.
Cover: Valentino Spring Summer 2019 Haute Couture Collection Finale, Courtesy of Valentino
