Monday, November 03, 2008

Perfect Isn't Perfect, Part 2

You may remember a post from July, 2008 called Perfect Isn't Perfect Anymore. It was about the new designer at Valentino and her first couture collection for the house. There were a lot of great comments about it, and we were all agreed that it was a big change from previous Valentino collections.

Well, you may have noticed that the designer who did the collection, Alessandra Facchinetti, is no longer at Valentino. She was touted as the one who would update the house and its image, but apparently there was unhappiness with her work or the way things were going in general.

I probably wouldn't have done a post just about that, but Kathleen Fasanella, of Fashion-Incubator fame left a comment recently on the original post which I'm going to quote here. You can use the link to the original post above to see the photos to which she refers. As always, she is very good at diagnosing problems and not only how they got there, but how to fix them. Here's her comment, and be sure to click on her link to see the photos with comments and arrows, etc. on her photo site.

kathleen said... 1:30 PM, October 17, 2008

Good eye Liana (as usual).
Don't know that I agree about the collar points, could be a matter of garment sway from walking but I do see another problem with it, bubbling on one side near the dart (see these photos I've made notes on.)



The taupe style ...that has GOT to be a proto, a last minute addition to the line. I found three problems with it, rather glaring imo. The buttons don't line up,



the aforementioned neckline bubble (same block as the white one?)



and that placket thingy in addition to buckling, is crooked.



Again, see my photos.

RE: zipper. The end point pucker is the least of it really, you can see it's puckering well before that end point. Pretty lousy imo. Also, look at that seam on the sleeve; it's caving inwards.




With all that embellishment weight, that really needed some kind of infrastructure to reinforce the seam.



I was very interested in her comments, and I admit I hadn't consciously noted the neckline bubbles, at least as a separate problem. The beige suit being a very quickie prototype rings true with me, as the placket itself looks like the kind of thing I would just fold from a scrap to see how I liked the look. It looks like they did that too, and then just tacked it on without interfacing it or figuring out how to attach it beautifully, and called it good for now.

Kathleen has graciously offered to elaborate if we have any questions, so please, ask away!


Edited to add the photos with Kathleen's notes, which I should have done in the first place.








5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Liana, there's photos to go with my comments. Didn't I leave the link? oh well
http://picasaweb.google.com/kathleen.fasanella/DesignerOopsies#

Liana said...

Kathleen, I just added your photos to the post.

Thinking about the sleeve embellishment on the blue zipper coat; do you think a lot of the problems with this collection, and especially the weight of the embellishments not being supported is perhaps a factor of her adding things at the last minute? I can see that she might make that kind of change at the last minute when there was no time to redo things with more underpinnings to hold up under the weight, and I can certainly understand seeing a finished garment and thinking that it needs something else. It seems like she may be doing more of her designing right on the almost completed garments than we usually see, though. Probably not the best way to do a collection like this, but if that's her style, I guess that's the way it is.

Anonymous said...

RE: weight of embellishments, one has a repertoire of materials available nearly always. Btw, the designer per se doesn't sew this stuff up and depending on their level of involvement, may not even dictate the "guts". So...it could be this designer being lower in the pecking order, got a lower level pattern maker (who dictates guts if designer does not) and certainly a lower level sample maker (didn't have the gumption to speak up). Still, in the end, the designer is responsible for the results produced by the team.

Pam Erny said...

Well, well, well....this "crooked couture" prompts me to give kudos to all the really fabulous "home-sewing designers" out there...who would never let something this flawed walk out of their sewing rooms!

And BTW, please...the both of you, if I ever start doing trunk shows again...do let me know far in advance if you plan to attend, OK? LOL!

Smiling...

Pam, from ~Off The Cuff Style~

Marty's Little Corner said...

The designer is ultimately responsible for what goes down the runway regardless of who does the sewing. If she were on Project Runway, it's possible that she would have been booted for these type of errors. I'm sure that Michael Kors and Nina Garcia would have noticed and pointed it out. I am not surprised that she was let go. Valentino's label deserves a lot better.