Valentino Couture Spring 2014

Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli have developed into couture’s most unabashed romantics. For the Valentino collection they showed on Wednesday evening, their starting point was opera. Intrigued by the work of set designer Maurizio Varamo of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, they enlisted him to design the floor coverings that snaked through the salons of the Hôtel de Salomon Rothschild. Rather than one continuous motif, Varamo delivered several, laid down continuously like oversize tiles — flowers, branches, butterflies flying into the clouds.

The point was uniqueness as much as fantasy. Chiuri and Piccioli opened with a literal nod to their musical muse — a wisp of a tulle gown, its skirt embroidered for graphic pop with a section of the “La Traviata” score. This had a surrealist vibe, at once enchanting and wacky. Yet that charmer proved one note, as the designers moved on to other flights of fancy.