Pristine beauties in a neo-togas and Spartan sandals with knee-high lacing, as if descended from pre-Raphaelite paintings, appeared on the catwalk of the fall-winter haute couture collection of fashion house Valentino. Designer duo Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli continues the theme of Puritan romanticism, which they made the house’s signature.

Valentino girl plays in innocence – as usual for the designers the strongest turned out to be the “simplest” looks – black and white dresses from “raw” wool in noble nuns’ spirit are impeccably tailored. On some of them bloom giant wheat ears (the nature leitmotif runs through all the works of the designers), filling the look with easiness of youth and rebirth. Just in the same way as British artists of the second half of the XIX century, tired of the academic traditions, turned for inspiration to Florentine painters of the early Renaissance (later this artistic movement became known as Pre-Raphaelites), Maria Grazia and Peropaolo turn to the past to create modern present.

The highlight of the collection lays in a peculiar “break of the pattern” – rough strips of leather encircling the waists of the nymphs, rising right up under the chest, as if hinting to us that an apparent innocence is fraught with more temptation than purity.

For their more “sophisticated” fans, for whom “haute couture” is manifested primarily in finishing details that require hundreds of hours of painstaking manual work, the designers prepared several flawless, meeting all the requirements of high fashion, looks: for example a gold lamé coat embroidered with pearls, sequins and silk thread is surely one of the most magnificent of the entire haute couture week.

Photo credits: Valentino / Yannis Vlamos