The Giambattista Valli Fall 2021 Haute Couture collection features frothy tulle cloud dresses, nonchalantly draped chiffon gowns, and frivolously plumed sequined column dresses.

Shot amongst the French Communist Party’s stables in Paris, fashion turns to utter escapism as plissé ruffles and silk chiffons warp and weft in and out of frame. It eddies something of a Parisian Coven, albeit lighter than Ryan Murphy’s vision, with the lucid pulls of time, suspenseful stares into the unknown, hurried and then stately lapses of each frame, predicated very much on what will be next – mystery set to the drag of a silk taffeta cape.

It’s that gloss of reemerging that colors the sinuous shapes and controlled excess of his couture. It’s turned a collection, very much within the Giambattista fold – one playing to his loved tropes of romance, and depth, and fantasy – to now seem utterly fresh and new. Valli turns dense frills linear and shifts peplum billows to shantung trousers with the deft swoop of a camera.

For many, couture is a dip into fashions most extreme and Giambattista is often the haute-archetype. For his Fall 2021, the puckered waists, columns of silk faille, and Odile Gilbert hairdos are perhaps his most daring shade of the season.