(by Roberta Filippini).
Women of the golden world of haute couture become luxurious hippies, experiencing the stunning intoxication of the flower children: Versace Atelier opened its Paris show by bringing to the runway what high fashion has never dared, the free fashion that denied fashion.
The girls who decades ago wore fabrics faded by time and the sun would have never imagined that one day expert seamstresses would be fraying by hand, with a brush and patience, metres and metres of delicate chiffon.
The girls of the Seventies, the restless young women of the Beat Generation who walked on the sand or the fields of Woodstock, are now the models of Versace who walked on a crystal runway suspended above 25,000 orchids placed by hand, one by one, to form a great mosaic of woven hot pink, yellow, and purple.
In the front row, among the most beautiful of the most beautiful, Naomi Campbell and Natasha Poly, the reigning queens in the golden kingdom of supermodels.
Everything changes and everything comes back: the flower power of Donatella Versace is included in long, sinuous, hand-painted dresses with irregular hems, with eight layers of chiffon, set to look as if framed by feathers.
The sleeves open like chalices on the wrists, recalling the hippy blouses that men and women wore with nonchalance, bringing them back from the Far East.
Every look is detailed and studied: from 300 to 600 hours for each dress, the looser it looks, the more valuable it is.
The velvet fil coupè with flowering branches join with corsets in velvet strips across a transparent voile bust.
A slender branch holds the dress and neck, seeming to climb through loose hair. Tiny sequins and crystals emphasize curves wrapped by irregular silk panels. The styling of the show even had rock star touches like super-high patent leather platform boots, a way to defuse the luxury but also harken back to those fateful years.
The dresses, whether long or very short, all have shades of petals, with clever touches of gray and black. The corsets striped in velvet join with lace which in turn overlaps a metallic mesh, in an work of indescribable ability that manages to retain all the lightness and movement essential for the new hippie couture.
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