Giambattista Valli brings a Fairy Tale to Barcelona Bridal Week and we first heard the news during Haute Fashion Week and now we can shout about it. If you are getting married soon, dream big it’s your fairytale in Giambattista Valli.
Giambattista Valli Barcelona Bridal Week
Giambattista Valli brought a breath of haute couture elegance and sexiness to its modern client with a leg-baring wedding bodysuit and we love it. It all went down during Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week as he was a guest designer of its 2024 edition.
The designer noted that new generations tend to be more confident about showing their bodies, and possess strong preferences about proportions and how they want to look.
The Paris-based Italian designer, held a catwalk show last Thursday as the centrepiece of the Bridal Night gala, showcased 10 haute couture gowns, 10 styles from his first two annual Love bridal capsules and 10 looks from his new Love 3 range, including a “twin set” gown with a frilly cape that can be worn instead of a veil, and then removed for the reception.
Giambattista Valli Brings a Fairytale to Barcelona
Having dressed such famous women as Amal Clooney, Charlotte Casiraghi, Jessica Biel and, most recently, Tatiana de Pahlen for their nuptials, Valli has accrued a unique point of view on wedding dresses, which he sees as “detached from fashion,” impervious to trends and “suspended in a dreamy moment.
“It’s a fairy-tale kind of moment,” he mused. “You want to be yourself, but you want to be somewhere else, too.”
He has long likened designing a haute couture wedding dress to a psychotherapy session with each bride-to-be, during which he discusses her childhood dreams of wedding dresses and her present-day style. “It’s about trying to pull something unexpected from this person you have in front of you,” he explained.
“It’s like adding different personalities into the Giambattista Valli language,” he said.
His bridal bodysuit, for example, riffs on the opening look from his spring 2024 haute couture runway, but interpreted in white tulle and paired with a big frothy cape. He allows that it’s a slightly “outrageous” proposition, but he could envision such a look worn by the likes of Anya Taylor-Joy or Hunter Schafer, for example.
Today the designer boasts haute couture devotees from China, Philippines, the Middle East, the U.S., South America, Europe and, most recently, Africa.
He sees his Love bridal capsule fitting somewhere in between his RTW and Haute Couture. Already wedding attire — for the bride, bridal party and guests — represents about 60 percent of his haute couture activity.
In Asia, Valli’s partners include Soyoo Bridal in South Korea and Treat in Japan, and it has done trunk shows in Hong Kong with the Loft, one of the city’s more confidential addresses. In the U.S., Valli has done bridal trunk shows with the likes of Ever After in Miami, Bloomingdale’s in New York and Stanley Korshak in Dallas.
He noted that Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week, which attracts key international retailers, will allow him to fine-tune his selective distribution strategy. Roughly 400 Spanish and international brands present wedding and communion-related collections in Barcelona via catwalk shows and showroom displays.
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Photo Credit: Giambattista Valli
