However the house that has been honing their aesthetic and consistently growing and producing items of both beauty and desirability, is Valentino.
Since their appointment to the house four years ago, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli have made the house relevant to  a modern clientele and taken Valentino’s couture line to extraordinary levels. This show was the stand out collection of the season: no gimmicks, no huge sets, but subtle, chic, beyond elegant clothes that you would love to wear.
The show was a soft botanical dream and a feat of design both from the talented pair and the seamstresses in Rome. The first offering was a dress scrolled over with red crepe piping to imitate wrought-iron gates. The result was structured yet faerie light. This technique crept its way round necklines and up entire dresses as well as appearing in sheer and black form,as a cape over a floor length gown constructed in Tulle, with embroidered crystal  so embedded so  into the form, it became almost as one.
The Valentino shape is chic, yet demure. Round necklines, long sleeved and and slender torsos  benefited from the soft tulle and delicate embroidery but also came to life in duchess satin; the material sculpted into the sumptuous yet austere forms of floor sweeping dresses. The effect? An alternative view of femininity that married the aesthetic of the both the romantic renaissance and sleek form of the ‘60s.
The team has been working with a shape now seemingly copied in ever-growing amounts and dealing in an enticing yet subtle view of women that feels relevant in today’s market place.The Valentino couture line makes clothes not for the most outrageous woman at the party, but definitely the most memorable.
by Marie-Louise von Haselberg
 
