Giambattista Valli Pre-Fall 2012

Giambattista Valli presented Pre-Fall 2012 collection in New York. The massive top-floor space with floor-to-ceiling views on three sides would seem to indicate that business is going very well chez Valli. He certainly didn't skimp on materials for this latest outing. Indeed, he may have come up with an entirely new category: the fur dress.

“I always say I do 50 percent of the job, and the other 50 is how the woman’s going to interpret the clothes,” Valli says. “You have to make her comfortable enough to put her personality into them.”

After presenting pre-fall in New York today, he’ll return to Paris where he has two weeks to finish his second haute couture collection and six weeks to wrap up fall. Other designers might lament the workload, but Valli refuses to look at it as anything other than a privilege because he knows his mood will reverberate through the clothes.

COMPLETE COLLECTION:Giambattista Valli Pre-Fall 2012