Marilyn

Giambattista VALLI

Giambattista Valli is a new Women’s wear designer, born in Rome. In 1980 he went to a school of Art and started to develop a passion for Fashion. Cocteau, Gruau’s illustrations for Dior and Yves Saint Laurent’s watercolors were his first inspirations.Valli showed his first collection in Fall 2005.

Further inspirational figures include: Halston, Andy Warhol, Richard Burnstein’s portraits, Antonio Lopez’s illustrations and Bianca Jagger for her iconic styles. From looking at Valli's inspirations I myself was drawn to some of the famous 1980's illustrations for example admire the polished airbrush effect used by Richard Burnstein.

The following are a few of Valli's creations that I find quite eye catching, the most intriguing being the red dress that resembles a vase.
Although a very literal approach, I started of my own research by looking into vases. One reason being is that it resembled that of the feminine figure.

Summer 06

Spring 07

Fall 08

The Fall 05 collection had figure hugging dresses and raised waistlines. By Summer 06 Valli had slowly started to introduce his iconic 50’s silhouette. In Summer 07 he shifted the waistline down to the Lower hip, giving the collection a 20’s feel with a sixties cut. By Winter 07 he showed a lot more texture, and architectural structure.

Fall 08 had a strong vase like silhouette, still continuing with the bottom heavy styles and cinched waist. In Spring 09 he started to introduce geometric shape, with sharp silhouettes and soft, fluffy fringing fabrics.Valli’s current collection is characterised with tribal inspired Prints, mixed with other clashing e.g cross hatching,and the use of colour blocking. The Pre fall 11/12 collection appears to have more irregular Shaping and short and boxy styles.

"I believe I have been appointed to Giambattista Valli, because his style is formal and sophisticated whilst I am a bit more casual but creative and yet still classy."

Here are images I started to collect at the earlier stages of my research. Some were quite spontaneous and others because i found eye catching.

A turquoise vase found in the V&A with a lantern found in the Mrs Robinson shop.

Whilst at the V&A I was also drawn to some tassels that were part of the decor from an English home in the late 19th - early 20th century. I decided to make my own tassels for a possible design idea or one to be developed, but they did not come out as I would have liked.
However this led me to the idea of wrapping, since that was the process used to create tassels. I looked at intertwined ropes, people wrapped up in paper and the work of Christo Van Claude.

I paid a visit to Camden to see what I could find and this is where my research took a more personal turn. I found some wooden African sculptures and admired the texture, colours and bulkiness. At the same time these statues seemed to hold a lot of emotion, they almost seemed as if they were bowing in shame.

I started to draw together shape and started to look into body dismorphia as this was related to shame and could be linked to the feminine shiloette and issues that women had with theirs.

The video above is about body dismorphia and what it actually means. This gave me a better understanding on the issue and I found it was very deep to explore. However I decided to take it forward in a light hearted manner.

I also thought of the extremes that some women through to get that perfect image, such as resulting to plastic surgery. As the word plastic came up I thought of grace jones because she always reminded me of a barbie so I watched an interview with her in the 80s.

I have always been interested in cosmetic surgery programmes and why females feel the need to aspire to a certain look and how body dismorhia is encouraged by todays media. I linked the idea of wrapping, shape and body dismorphia to come up with the the concept name 'Revealed & Concealed'. To me this title meant different things. When it came to draping an idea I thought some areas of the garment could be wrapped(textured) and other parts not, giving the appearance that there is another layer underneath another texture (look at draping pictures further down).

It also meant having a void, maybe in some areas of the garment e.g. the use of black fabrics a negative space, as if some parts are missing.

I also thought the title 'Revealed and Concealed' could relate back to the vases and other lantern shapes I found through research. I thought maybe to create a sculptural shape around the body that is not necessarily accurate to the body shape of the person wearing it, almost like a body suit.

Sculptural shapes, initial design roughs.

I emulated the vase like shiloettes as design ideas mostly for evening wear. I then went on to look for more images that conjure femininity and hidden beauty.