Inside Giambattista Valli’s spring/summer 2019 couture collection

“It’s not enough,” Giambattista Valli muses to himself, inspecting an already capaciously skirted gown from his spring/summer 2019 Haute Couture collection. It’s a few days before his show and the designer is considering a generous injection of material into a carmine-hued taffeta creation. “To fill the spaces of haute couture, we have to have exaggerated volumes,” he explains, calling to mind his signature behemoth silhouettes. The maestro of mass is speaking to Vogue from his airy showroom in Paris’ Madeleine district, where—in a sort of Alice in Wonderland play on proportion—even the doors have been cut to super-size, the better to frame his effervescent, otherworldly creations.

Since the inception of the couture side of his namesake business seven years ago, Valli has cornered the market in sartorial scope; many of his looks require endless hours of embellishment and hundreds of metres of material. This season, one gown in particular features 6,000 metres of gathered and embroidered ribbon, fashioned into a cloud-like heap; while a cropped, beaded, snakeskin-print long-sleeve top took approximately 240 hours to embroider. Valli is quick to downplay such details, however. “It sounds really heavy,” he says. “When you say, ‘It took three months to make,’ I’m already tired! Of course it takes a lot of time, but it looks effortless, like you just stitched it in one night.” Indeed, the looks appear weightless once assumed—on the runway, the dresses often disappear from view long after the model has made her exit.

However, one night is not enough to make garments such as these, and it is this exacting practice that drives and inspires Valli. For this collection, the designer revisited his first flirtations with the city of light and haute couture, to truly celebrate the artform. “I decided 20 years ago to move to Paris; my dream was to build a maison here and I did it. And I think now, in this uncertain social moment in France, it’s nice to show what is the best in my field about France and why I moved here,” says Valli, whose showroom is right in the middle of the gilets jaunes protests of the past several weeks. He returned to where it all started for him—his hometown, Rome, where he could relive that early dream. “I was thinking about why I went to Paris in the first place, what I was inspired by,” he says. “Monsieur Yves Saint Laurent, Monsieur Hubert de Givenchy—all these amazing [designers] and the rituals and savoir-faire of this world.”

It was a photograph of Monsieur Saint Laurent’s world that provided the starting point for Valli’s collection. Taken by Helmut Newton for French Vogue in 1977, Chez Yves Saint Laurent depicts a group of women lounging, louche and lavishly dressed, after a salon presentation. It signifies a bygone opulence that Valli wanted to reignite. “With this collection, [I wanted] to support the work of the ateliers, the sense of haute couture, what the real meaning of luxury is,” he says, explaining that in English, “luxury” doesn’t have the same old-world connotations of fantasy as it does in French. “I wanted to [recreate] the atmosphere of a salon, the intimate privilege of being in this private world,” he explains. “Ready-to-wear is action, it’s now. Couture is more like walking in an historical moment that doesn’t really exist. For me, the most important thing is to inspire.”

Fans of Valli’s signatures will find plenty to be inspired by. This season, his flounces, volume and painstakingly executed surface details come sprinkled with oriental touches in the form of sikke hats and mosaic beading, as well as hand-painted renderings of 15th-century Flemish art that hangs in Valli’s home. There are bows—big and black, or small and silver; handmade duchesse de soie corsetry, hiding in plain sight under a sheer panelled gown; ostrich and emu feathers; and swathes of silk organza flowers. “It’s almost like the ABC of haute couture—showing what I’ve learnt,” the designer explains, referencing his tenures under Italian couturiers Roberto Capucci and Fendi, as well as Emanuel Ungaro.

After the interview, Valli shares some photos of his clients wearing his creations—a blushing bride in Capri, another in Brazil, all in the designer’s tempered puffball silhouettes. “I have to tell you, what we sell the most are these huge, impossible dresses. They love them.” So we’re all agreed: when it comes to Giambattista Valli, more is more.