Shop Giambattista Valli’s Just-Released Beachy Capsule Collection
How to gain access to the brand-new Giambattista Valli Beach Club? Well, with no actual location it’s not a club-club, per se; and admittance is really more about the adoption of a philosophy than the submitting of an application. All one has to do is shop the French couturier’s first-ever beach capsule collection, which drops in stores today with the help of Valli’s muse—and the beach club’s founding member, if you will—Bianca Brandolini.
“A contemporary nomad, with her feminine, almost goddess-like appearance, juxtaposed with a tomboy attitude, she travels from one place to another, always equipped with a swimsuit in her suitcase, regardless of the season or destination she is traveling to next,” Valli says in describing Brandolini—a Parisian-born jet-set girl about many towns who hails from the aristocratic Italian Brandolini d'Adda clan—and the ideals possessed by her fellow club members.
Good thing Monsieur Valli is equipping her with six bathing suits–both bikinis and one-pieces. On these suits, and throughout the collection, is a lovely blue and white floral pattern and a logo that reads more like a motif than a monogram—scrolling V’s evoke the “beautiful ironwrought gates of Southern Italy’s villas as well as the enameled flower prints, an echo of the Amalfi Coast ‘Maiolica’ terraces,” says Valli in a release.
The Amalfi is a great place to debut any one of the pieces in the collection, which includes straw bags, floral bucket hats, and flowing shirt dresses that can take you from the pool deck to a cocktail party with a swipe of lipstick. It’s a tight edit that could store easily in someone’s carry-on and outfit them completely for their next holiday in the sun. Sport the elegant black one-piece, cut in a boat neck, beneath an unbuttoned caftan swirling with florals; and when you get to the beach, toss your dress off and into your straw bag. It all arrives just in time for the announcement that vaccinated Americans should soon be able to travel throughout Europe this summer.
As for Brandolini, dressing for holidays is more a state of mind than a reality at the moment, but the pieces are so transportive it’s the next best thing. She loves a midi-length white dress (on top, it looks like a t-shirt with rolled-up sleeves; at bottom, it’s a full skirt evoking Audrey’s in Roman Holiday). But what Brandolini appreciates most, and what draws her to Valli, is the seasonless-ness of it all. She first met Valli years ago, when he was dressing her mother; it wasn’t long before Brandolini the younger was fit for her own couture pieces. “You know those statement pieces that you have in mind and you can say, OK, that’s summer 2021, or that print is Resort?” she asks. “Giambattista was never into that. He really has his point of view and his own way of seeing fashion.”
What’s been the highlight of Brandolini’s campaign process? The shoot itself, which took place back in November in a studio in Paris. Venturing to the beach itself wasn’t feasible (due to COVID restrictions and the time of year), so the team made due and Mr. Valli was on hand to splash Brandolini with water to mimic waves. “He was splashing me with buckets of cold water,” Brandolini recalls, “I almost think he was enjoying it!” But soon enough, she reassures Vogue, she’ll be able to get back to a beach—and when she does, she’ll be wearing Valli.
