From the delicately naïf Black embroidery on the White shift dress that was the first look of Giambattista Valli's Resort 2016 collection, we knew we were in comfortably familiar territory. As the looks progressed, all of the usual Valli tropes were alighted upon and visited. From minute floral prints to Swingin' 60's Mod hemlines and dress shapes, to all things ruffled, Valli delivered all the things that keep his loyal and slightly eccentric customers happy and coming back for each iteration.
Nearly a decade into his own label though, the tiresome feeling of ennui has begun to set in, not so much on Valli's part, he seems to love what he does as much as when he first started, but on the part of the viewer. His clients might like being stuck in the perpetual loop that Valli's clothes and aesthetic seem to be stuck in, but not all of us are drinking the Kool-Aid. This Resort collection is glaring proof that as lovely as what Valli produces from season to season, the daring and risk have left his work and things have grown fallow and stagnant.
The clothes... For what they are, ARE certainly lovely, perhaps here a bit too Lolita-ish, but convincingly lovey nonetheless. The only problem that arises is... We've seen all this, the flared tunics over pants, the Girly Virgin/Whore dress with the Crotch grazing hems, the wallpaper prints that look like they were ripped from the walls of "Peyton Place" or "Bewitched" the literal, EVERYTHING, we have digested and processed many times over by now, I, for one, don't have it in me to look past the redundancy of it all and keep a unbiased eye cast over the whole mess. Valli is in desperate help of getting his needle firmly unstuck from the groove... or maybe a little more vulgarly, Get his Head out of his ass and look around for some fresh ideas!
That's All.
Bye4Now!
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