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December 15th, 2009
Giambatista Valli SS/10
Fresh mint at the market
Margarita Missoni at GBV Studio in Paris
Giambatista Valli hard at work
The garden at the Hotel Ryad Madani
GBV Mood board
accessories
Hard at work with Giamba and Anne McNally
spring summer 2010 collection
spring summer 2010 collection
MARRAKECH PART II
This summer I watched Bernado Bertolucci’s, “The Sheltering Sky.” I cannot explain here how this movie affects my life. Life, like Kandinsky, is full of circles. In any case I saw this movie after I had been to Marrakech. It’s where I met Giambatista Valli for the first time through a mutual friend, Carlos Mota who’s a style editor for Elle Décor.
The first thing Giambatista did was, order us mint tea while sitting on the crowded side of the Café Des Epices, in the center of the Medina. Morrocan mint tea, it’s served cold, and very sweet, often in a small, decorated glass; Morrocco is full of details. I mention mint because when I first promised in Paris to explain to you the reason there was so much green in his collection, it is due to the ever present mint, and it is fresh mint, Emerald green! There is lots of green to be seen, like date palm leaves, like olives, like orange trees, like all the green you can find in the dessert. I had no idea. I hardly ever research a city before I visit. I’ve said before, I’m lazy. Actually I did google it but my mind still thought desert meant orche, not verdant.
In the middle of the Medina, in the middle of my hotel, Ryad Madani, is an extremely lush garden. It reminded me of home (St.Lucia). Outside of my room – banana trees, bougainvillia, palms and cypress trees just to name a few. And so Giamba’ as I now call him because he is a darling, in the desert, saw lots of trees; hence the green in the collection.
And there was Picasso too.
We all had breakfast one morning where Giamba took me to a nook at the top of his villa and showed me the snow capped Atlas mountains. It sucked the wind out of me. He then brought me over to a dainty little table shaded by honeysuckle vines. Breakfast here includes, in addition to flat bread, fresh coffee, fruit and tea – fervent discussion. Everyone had a book or the paper, about six of us. I was happy to just listen because I don’t come across this thing in New York often. Smooth transition from Italian, to French, to English, Arabic, like music… One gentleman was reading poetry, the other an Egyptian newspaper, Giamba going over a copy of a certain Picasso book of late paintings. Ever so politely one would stop and remark on something that moved them and so the breakfast went. The silences were most delicious.
To be continued…