Alta Roma Haute Couture spring-summer 2013
The perfect fusion of elegance and culture
As the curtain fell on the Paris Haute Couture week, the attention of the media and top fashion journalists shifted to the “eternal city”, that is to Rome, where, the twenty-first edition of Alta Roma Alta Moda opened on 26th January, the renowned fashion event that, has for years now become the meeting point between the most historic Italian fashion houses and the new national and international producers and creative companies. 
The show ended on 29th January, officially concluding the mandate of the current Board of Directors headed by the president Silvia Venturini Fendi. It gained a huge amount of positive reviews and was appreciated by all the experts of the fashion sector for the high level of elegance brought to the catwalk by the designers together with the refinement of the materials and the extreme care put into the details.
Today Alta Roma has become an event dedicated to Italian high fashion thanks to the support of many Italian masters and also of many foreigners, who consider Rome their home. Every dress is an explosion of beauty in itself, clearly representing the tailoring and style that only the real experts and lovers of Made in Italy are able to produce.
“Challenging the recession with haute couture and precious workmanship”: this is the concept that every designer highlighted each in his own way in his spring summer 2013 collection.
Raffaella Curiel staged her catwalk at the Turkish Embassy in Rome, showing a very elegant collection entirely inspired by the Renaissance noblewoman, already muse of many fifteenth century artworks, such as Botticelli’s paintings, an extremely beautiful, classic and feminine woman. And it’s this very element of harmonious classicism and elegant beauty that shines through every dress created by the historic Curiel fashion house.
Suits have slightly more pronounced shoulders, while jackets are cinched at the waist and dip to the thigh at the sides.
Outfits for special occasions are made from insubstantial floral fabrics from chiffon to crepe and organza.
Voile, chiffon, lace and embroidery decorate mermaid dresses or tunic dresses, whose colours range from white to powder pink, from gold to forest green, from peony red to sky blue.
Evening dresses are very clinging and perfectly enhance woman’s defined sensual form, while shoulders are often left uncovered, for a further touch of refined sensuality.
On his side, Carlo Alberto Terranova, for Sarli Couture, focused his new spring summer 2013 collection on the characteristic scents and colours of his native Sicily and on the reproduction of the historic Caltagirone ceramics on fabric, opting for provocative volumes and seductive lines.
Suits are dynamic and little coats for day wear are two-tone. Cocktail dresses have sleeves with a leaf effect and bustiers embroidered with jet or Swarowski crystals, while evening dresses are made in silk cady, silk gazar and multilayered chiffon with a clinging but airy effect, very often enriched with lace and transparent tulle.
The essential shades of the new Sarli Couture spring-summer 2013 collection?
All the typical colours of the Sicilian landscape, such as pomegranate orange, Sicilian chocolate, fluorescent yellow, blue, bronze and the classic Sarli white.
Gattinoni’s spring/summer 2013 collection, put together as usual by its historic creative director Guillermo Mariotto and set at the Salone d’Onore of the National Museum of Arts and Popular traditions in Rome’s Eur, brought 4D technology to the catwalk, adapted to the demands of couture and enriched by lace and embroidery. The whole collection plays on the concept of three-dimensionality and of perspective graphics. The dress is born in the 3D world to be transported and re-created in our reality.
Journalists and jet set, arriving to view the show, were given special 3D glasses to observe more clearly the jumpsuits cut from tulle and worked over multiple layers of lace, the optical designs of dresses and the aero dynamic geometries.
Multimedia is more to be seen in the inspiration and the tailored cuts than in the collection itself, where there is rather a deliberate play of sheer layers, with very light fabrics that allow the models’ bodies to show through.
The Gattinoni day look is characterized by pant or shorts suits accompanied by organza shirts or enriched with panels of lace on tulle, everything in purely summer shades.
Evening dresses, on the other hand, are fluctuating and soft, almost ethereal, dedicated to a strong and self-reliant woman, who is bold but stylish.
The Must Have of the collection is the pagoda hat.
The focal point of the spring-summer 2013 collection presented by Renato Balestra is the colour blue used on every dress from the collection, leaving very little room for any other shade which if it is used, is harmoniously interwoven with blue, making dresses even more seductive.
And, as musical background to this galaxy of blue, the theme colour of this maison, there was the voice of the great Domenico Modugno and his famous song “Volare”.
The other key theme of this collection is the cornflower, chosen for its particular shade of blue and used to underline the necklines and emphasise the hems.
Simply sublime is the evening dress in white and blue, enriched by embroidery, typical of the Balestra style.
And, at this twenty-first edition of Alta Roma, Alta Moda, Balestra was honoured by a group of eleven emerging designers taking part in the “Be Blue Be Balestra” project, creating dresses in the classic Balestra Blue, a shade that has distinguished the Italian designer for more than fifty years and that, along with Valentino red, has created a piece of Italian fashion in the world.
So ended one of the most important fashion events for our country, where, once again, we could breathe deeply of the air of tradition and craftsmanship that only the genuine Made in Italy can offer; a really special event where, in a totally friendly way, the milestones of Italian fashion came to challenge each other; the designer names who have made Italian fashion important and famous all over the world and that we all admire and respect for their enormous value.
