In the pristine backstage area at Giambattista Valli, a massive bouquet of fabulous Trianon roses in delicate wisteria hues drew the eye. “Flowers, roses, nature — they’re noble and eternal, they’re a caress for the soul,” Valli said. The effervescent, excessive volumes of his couture collection were inspired by fresh blossoms, and by the soothing power of nature.

Valli believes that couture rhymes with the notion of amplification, and resonates with everything “out of the ordinary.” His is a practice similar to an art form, where shapes are sculpted through draping, and volumes are created by listening to what fabrics are whispering, or, as he puts it, “what they have to say.” For Valli, the art of couture is in the gesture, and in the technical prowess of the atelier, a work of magic that, in a sort of cryptic charade, he described as “the opening up into the infinite beauty of the unfinished, and into the unfinished beauty of infinity.”

He started the collection from the toile of a simple bustier bodysuit; the show’s opening look, it came in pitch-black velvet and adorned with white roses trimming its off-the-shoulder neckline. Fresh roses were also laced into the model’s hair, which gave an air of romantic Botticellian beauty. The corset served as a template, elongating into a series of embellished minidresses from which tulle draping ballooned in a variety of inflated shapes, with intricate asides of fine-pleating and extended swishing trains. Interspersed among the abundance of rustling taffeta silks in pale colours, some printed with ombré shadows of flowers, were a handful of outstanding numbers in obsidian-black velvet. They added a dash of regal drama and dark romance to an otherwise whimsical repertoire of elysian filles-en-fleur.