FRANCE: Italian designer Valentino was in a nostalgic mood for his Haute Couture Spring Summer 2007 showing at the Paris Fashion Week

After 45 years in the design business Italian designer Valentino was in a nostalgic mood for his Haute Couture Spring Summer 2007 showing at the Paris Fashion Week on Monday (January 22). Against plain white floating drapes on a simple runway, Valentino's models wore fragile and feminine dresses reminiscent of the 'sala bianca' designs he became famous for in 1968 when Jackie Kennedy wore one of his simple designs for her wedding to Aristotle Onassis. "Why not after 45 years go back to another white collection, just to show how Couture is done because with white you can not hide anything. You only see perfection, you see only the cut, you see the purity of the workmanship," Valentino said. Using white or very pale pinks and yellows in sheer tulles and silks Valentino said he wanted to bring out the silhouette and shape of femininity. The dresses, combined with coats and delicate boleros can be worn in the day or at night. Evening dresses were decorated in embroidery, including taffeta origami and embroidery containing jewels. Addressing the controversy over too-thin models currently dogging the fashion world, Valentino said he hopes this collection highlights the femininity of the female form and that to show off his creations his models were not stick thin. "You know this time I took some girls, then they put a little weight and, you know, I don't know if you noticed but they didn't look anorexic.......they looked quite sexy today and they did not look very very narrow and skinny," he said, Valentino denied that he has asked the models to gain a few pounds to give them busts needed to fill out his creations. Organisers of Paris fashion week have declined to install a ban, like Milan has just done, on models with a Body Mass Index of lower than 18. Vogue Editor Anna Wintour weighed into the debate at the Valentino show where she was a front row guest, saying any enforced ban in unworkable and does not realistically address the problems of anorexic models. "It totally does not make any sense, it's completely unenforceable," she said. On Tuesday, the Haute Couture displays continue with designer Karl Lagerfeld for Channel and Christian Lacroiz displaying their designs.

ITN Source | January 25, 2007

Tags:. .weight. .sense. .pinks. .install. .dresses