Like most designers this season, Giambattista Valli seemed to be projecting ahead to Better Days, spun a yarn to Vogue about how he was inspired by travels back and forth between Paris and his hometown of Rome:
It made him think of a like-minded spirit from another time: Pauline Bonaparte Borghese, the sister of Napoleon, who married a Roman aristocrat and shocked the city’s high society with her liberated French ways.
“She brought a new attitude to Rome. She was getting naked with super comfort. It was very scandalous at the time,” Valli said. “When Paulina arrived in Rome, everybody was very conservative, very tied up in the pope and Italian tradition. She arrived and got naked and confident and didn’t care.” […] Looking to the near future ahead—a wardrobe for our impending reemergence—Valli detected in that attitude something he thought felt right for now. “That’s why I love this very short and confident silhouette: great legs and great brains,” as he put it.
“Naked and confident and don’t care” feels like it’s going to be on a lot of t-shirts this summer, once more people get the vax jab. He probably should have made some.
