Monday, January 20, 2014

Haute Couture .. Spring 2014 Atelier Versace



Haute Couture conjures many things in the minds of those who follow fashion; one of the things it doesn’t create is the feeling that you will experience an end result that presents itself as cheap and trashy! Oops, did I really say that? Dontallamammamia is at it again. She truly has a magic touch; she can turn hours and days of hard painstaking labor from the most talented of ateliers and render clothes that would suit any drag ball or hooker convention on an international basis. Swagged, draped, beaded, embroidered, cut out, cut up, bright, shiny, and otherworldly are just some of the adjectives that come to mind.



Restraint is not word in the vocabulary of the designer and it is a word she really really needs to learn as surely this is a case that supports the adage that more is not always better. Even the dearly departed Gianni knew the power of restraint and used it to his advantage but not Dontallamammamia!! She just piles it on until hell won’t have it and then adds more. We might say the clothes are theatrical or costumey but then that again that would be a great complement for her labors. The cowled hood is amusing once but after the 10th time attached to every piece... not so much! Is it possible that these clothes will play to the house parties of the Middle East where the women dress up in their finery behind closed doors or it is possible these clothes are for the newly rich oligarch’s mistress who will seduce her prey in one of these frocks. The mind does wander after seeing a collection like this. Even the tailored pieces seem to fall short of any kind words!



On a “positive” note, if there is one, the clothes were far more Balmain than they were Alaia (signora’s reference) and each piece is truly  multiple  feats of construction and embellishment but that is more the outcome of the ateliers than her hand. There is ONE effect that I found to be quite beautiful and that is the all over beading that was used throughout which gets quite lost amongst all the “stuff” that’s going on . The beading which I call pin dot beading might be compared with “goose bumps’ of a sort  ...but the more evenly spaced and orderly type.



Bottom line is very simple; it will cost an awful lot of money to look this cheap and tawdry as Dolly Parton might have said!!!


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