Flowers have long been a timeless source of inspiration in fashion. Their exquisite colours and textures have indeed an irresistible allure for designers working on all sorts of collections, from Haute Couture to Ready-to-Wear and Resort, no matter the season.
At Valentino's Spring/Summer 2024 men's runway show, held on Friday in the courtyard of Milan's Statale University (Valentino Garavani had first presented his menswear collection in Milan back in 1985, so this was a way to pay homage to that event), most designs were brought to life by floral motifs.
Embroidered flowers adorned lapels and replaced ties, jackets were covered in sequinned flowers or featured prints of oversized blooms. An emerald green jacket featured dense three-dimensional embroideries of white flowers. The floral motifs in the collection were also used to subvert masculinity and masculine tropes, introducing a delicate and gentle quality inspired by the grace of flowers.
Floral elements were also employed to uplift the overall mood, punctuated by quotes from Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life (the book was sent out as invitation to the show), such as "Things get broken and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully," printed across a black tailored suit, at the front of a pair of denim trousers and on the bags.
In this case the flowers on the garments complemented the words of resilience printed on the designs and vice versa. But there are designs in which floral appliqués silently convey a message.
An example could be a white linen mini-dress with one shoulder strap designed by Cinzia Ruggeri in the mid-'80s that was decorated with a repeated motif of nymphaea flowers, also known as water lilies (not to be confused with lotus flowers, check the leaves on the dress).
Three-dimensionality here was achieved through the layering of the three parts that formed the water lily decorative motif – the green leaf and two layers of petals. Appliqued on the dress, the flowers looked as if they floated on the fabric as they would have floated on a pond (while the one decorating the end of the shoulder strap looked as if it had drifted away in a poetically rebellious gesture...). Linen is a light fabric and, rather than embellishing the flowers with heavy beads and sequins, Ruggeri used multiple layers of the textile to create the floral decorations, ingeniously preserving in this way the lightness of the design, and ensuring its sustainability.
The dress was also a way to promote linen: at the time Ruggeri was the artistic director of the Commissione Tutela Lino (Commission for the Protection of Linen) and collaborated with the Centro Tutela Lino (Centre for the Protection of Linen) - organisations that promoted this fabric in Italy.
At the time linen was traditionally used for more classical pieces in both men and womenswear, and for home textiles, but, employing it for her designs for the ready-to-wear label Bloom and for her eponymous label, Ruggeri proved this fabric could have been used for more modern, playful and whimsical creations, like this dress that could be considered as an oxymoronic creation since it is made entirely of linen, a luxurious fabric, but it is still practical; it bursts with life, but it is remarkably wearable.
Besides, beneath this tapestry of floral appliqués there may be a hidden meaning. Rather than by Monet, a painter passionate about water lilies, this dress may indeed have been inspired by the nature of this aquatic plant.
The scientific name of the water lily comes from Greek mythology: nymphs were beautiful water spirits that often drowned innocent people who visited the creeks or ponds they protected. This beautiful yet dangerous aspect of the plant may have been on Ruggeri's mind, but the designer probably was fascinated more by the fact that, like the lotus flower, water lilies blossom in seemingly unlikely places, they grow indeed from the muddy bottom of a body of water. Besides, some water lilies open only during the day and close at night (others open only in the evening), recreating a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
So you can perceive this design just as a pretty dress or embrace it as a manifesto for unyielding strength, calling upon the wearer to embody the resilience of water lilies emerging from the muddy depths of rivers and returning to blossom again and again, renewed and more splendid, almost to say: "You may try to submerge me, but you cannot extinguish my spirit."
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