Why Amal Clooney’s Favorite Designer, Giambattista Valli, is Having An Epic Year
Amal Clooney wears Giambattista Valli. Photos, from left to right: Splash News, Hollywood Reporter, Pacific Coast News
When Rihanna stepped onto the red carpet at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards this past February, she wasn’t dressed in leather or chains—near-requisites for the one awards show that welcomes daring on its red carpet. Instead, she chose a frothy, gargantuan, empire-waisted pink poof from Giambattista Valli’s most recent haute-couture collection. With its extreme proportions, unexpected color and incredible craftsmanship, it was subversive in a way an “edgy” Grammy outfit never could have been. It was also beautiful, and, as we put it, “epic.”
So, why all the fuss? “Giambattista knows women,” explains Roopal Patel of Roopal Patel Consulting, a New York-based agency that advises retailers and fashion brands. “He loves la dolce vita.”
In turn, celebrities love Valli. The Rome-raised, Paris-based designer is on something of a red-carpet roll. Since January alone, he’s dressed Rihanna at the Grammy’s, Lupita N’yongo at the Golden Globes, Jennifer Aniston at the premiere of her film Cake, and Amal Clooney. Three times. Julianna Margulies, Salma Hayek, and Kerry Washington have also chosen Valli for recent appearances. Not a bad lineup.
Rihanna in Valli at the 2014 Grammy Awards. Photo: Getty Images
To be sure, the love is well deserved. Valli, who launched his ready-to-wear line in 2005 and his couture collection in 2011, is a party goer’s dream. (Just to be clear, RTW is the stuff you can buy in stores; couture is one of a kind.) “Giambattista’s clothes are romantic, nostalgic, dreamy. They’re not part of a trend,” Patel says. “They’re magical.”
It’s true. Valli, who garnered notice early in his career for a fearless approach to proportions and an unbridled love of lace, color and florals, has managed to funnel all of those typically girly tropes into fantasy fashion. And while “fantasy” is something we associate with celebrity dressing, Valli’s work resonates in real life, too. His collections generated more than €22 million (about $24 million) in sales in 2014, according to the Financial Times, and those numbers are rising steadily with every season.
Right now, though, Valli has ambitions to dress even more of us: His three-seasons-old Giamba line—which he shows at Milan Fashion Week—offers the same unabashedly feminine ideas as his main collection, but with a more youthful edge. The lace smock dresses ($3,380 at Saks Fifth Avenue) and ruffled denim tops ($634 at My Theresa) don’t come cheap, but they do make the wearer feel worthy of the red carpet. A girl can dream, right?
