On April 18, in the neoclassical landmark of Llotja de Mar in Barcelona, Giambattista Valli debuted his first-ever bridal runway show. Held during Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week, Valli showcased his collection at the Barcelona Bridal Night gala to a crowd of international buyers, press, and friends of the designer including Olivia Palermo and Lara Cosima.
The runway show was held in a high-ceilinged room with a marbled checkered floor and arches surrounded at the base with mirrored surfaces and white hydrangea. Models appeared wearing 30 designs from all three of Giambattista’s bridal launches, which the designer instead calls “Love Collections.” While the designer had made custom bridal gowns in the past for specific clients, he first debuted a designated bridal line in 2021 full of sumptuous gowns in lace and tulle. The following year, he revealed his second line, yet still withheld showcasing it in a runway setting. The new collection expanded upon his previous work in bridal with a broader range of silhouettes, ranging from sparkling minis with voluminous tulle trains to iridescent coats to gowns with fitted bodices, deep basque waistlines, and full skirts.
Speaking to Valli after the show, he notes that his initial forays into bridal grew from custom requests into something bigger fairly quickly. “It comes out from many people asking me,” he tells Vogue. “I’m both so lucky to do the most incredible weddings and the most incredible women coming to me and asking me to do projects with them. It’s almost become a statement to wear a Giambattista Valli wedding dress. I didn’t want to keep that kind of elite corner only for haute couture. But, I wanted to share with a larger group of friends, from a geographical point of view.”
Valli expresses that his collections are meant for those who want to have a certain lifestyle and feeling on their wedding day and beyond. “It’s a mental position of a woman, and you can find it all over the world,” he explains. “So I’m going to interpret these wedding dresses for a very broad market. There’s always a Valli girl around looking for something extraordinary that comes from the haute couture universe, that is one of a kind, and has an excellence when making it.” The designer notes that he doesn’t want his gowns to be too traditional or rigid. “It’s for a party, a happy moment, and a fun time to share together,” says Valli. “You can share it barefoot on a tropical beach, in a villa in Tuscany or the South of France, in Japan, in Mexico, in the Middle East, or wherever it is. The style has to be adaptable in a Valli way to a different location or a different personality. That is very important.”
Why does Valli designate bridal as a “Love Collection”? “Because I hate situational things in general,” he adds. “I think a Love Collection is nice. It’s a love moment. You can wear it if you get married or you can wear it even just to go and party. It’s funny. Sometimes celebrities ask us for the Love Collection pieces for the red carpet just to wear it. It’s not really bridal. I think there are a lot of things in a specific moment where you need something that’s a little bit more dreamy.”
As the word bridal can feel quite very gendered, did Valli also chose “love” to be more inclusive to the queer community? “I think that I make clothes, and I think people can interpret them at their very, very best,” he says. “This, for me, is the best thing. I don’t have any boundaries. In the first collection, I did a suit in lace. Things like this are adaptable. You want to jump in a Valli? You’re most welcome to. It’s a big family, a big community. The larger it is, the better it is.”
Valli also insists that the newest launch of Love 3 isn’t so much a collection as a gathering of new personalities—many of them defined by his own friends. “I don’t want to impose anything onto my women… to my people. Whoever it is,” he says. “Every single dress has a name like Bianca or Tatiana. They’re my friends. There are personalities for my friends. One could be perfect for her, or one could be perfect for another. Some of them are much sexier, and some are much more romantic. Some of them are fragile, and some are much more austere. Some of them are more light or more heavy. There are different scales of personalities and that is important.”
Valli explains that designing for bridal is a unique task for a designer, likening the process to psychotherapy. “It’s like Sigmund Freud,” he says. “You sit and listen. Sometimes people will arrive and know exactly what they want. But they are very few. There are other people that vaguely know what they want, but they don’t know if they want it or not. So you have to hold their hands and sometimes bring them to something that can be unexpected and you surprise them. The surprise is a plus.”
While previous Love Collections had been launched via lookbooks, Valli explains he decided to show them for the first time when Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week director Albasarí Caro came to him. “Barcelona is the most prestigious window to international vendors in Europe. I thought it was the best place to do it, and that it was the right moment,” he says.
But as we end our conversation, Valli turns the tables: “Let me ask you. Did you have a ‘love’ moment during the show?” I described the stunning finale, where the models all came together to fill the historic space, showcasing the beauty of the gowns being reflected at every angle. “You were dreaming with me,” he replies. “As Yoko Ono says, ‘A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.’ So today was a moment of reality of what’s possible. I think in a moment where there are so many actualities, it’s nice to balance with moments of pure beauty—and to share it.”
