Valentino Autumn/ Winter 2015 Show Report: Magical Musings

After a month of shows, a Zoolander moment brought a smile to the lips of even the most weary of fashion editors at Valentino in Paris this afternoon. For the finale, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, dressed to impress and straight of face, strutted their stuff on this revered runway to roars of approval.

It was a brilliant and also unpredictable move on the part of the designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli: for all the majesty of their designs and purity of their Valentino aesthetic, they have a sense of humour. And now the entire world knows that.

But what of the clothes? The designers took inspiration from two women this season: Emilie Louise Floge, the artist Gustav Klimt’s companion and subject of some of his best-known work, and Celia Birtwell, wife of Ossie Clark, muse to David Hockney and a great print designer in her own right. The former was a couturier also, meanwhile, who freed women of the rigidity of underpinnings and was a suitably starry figure at the heart of bohemian life during the Viennese Secession.

‘These two different women share a singular approach to life: they combine fragility and sensuality and give strength and depth to feminine grace,’ the show notes read.

Grace is a word that suits Valentino well. In the Instagram age, their designs demand time in order to be fully appreciated and are dignified, considered and considerate of women’s needs. The technique involved in their realisation – both in terms of pattern-cutting and embellishment – is, equally, painstaking but always light of touch.

A geometrically conceived opening – think black and white diamonds and checks – gave way to the more familiar folkloric and floral motifs that now characterise this name. At least some of the latter were, in fact, the work of Ms Birtwell, who has collaborated with the designers, and the two-dimensional, naïve appearance of butterflies and daisies in particular reflected that. Signature lace came for autumn in a gorgeous colour palette of duck egg blue, antique gold and cherry red. For those who prefer their look more stripped back, beautifully proportioned, even majestic black tailoring was all present and correct and Valentino wouldn’t be Valentino without the presence of at least one dazzling red gown: this time in the finest silk chiffon.

For the more free of spirit, a largely empire-line, narrow silhouette and collar reaching right up to the throat was followed by oversized black cashmere knits worn over gauzy black skirts finished with delicate metal embroideries. As a modern, no-frills solution to eveningwear this look shone especially brightly.

The over-arching idea was to cater to the ‘diversity of today’s woman’ by all accounts. And this collection did just that.