Sarah Mower on the Valentino Fall 2011 Couture collection,

Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli are really cracking it at Valentino. Their couture show Wednesday morning hit such a note of contemporary romance that it held the audience spellbound with delight and admiration as a dream sequence of long, fragile dresses trailed lightly through the grand salons of the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild.

Piccioli articulated the feeling the duo have been seeking to express since they stepped into their roles at the storied house in 2008. "It's the grace of a woman we've been looking for, " he said. "That's not a word that's used very much today, but we think it's more subversive now to dress like this, with a sense of regality and luxury that has nothing to do with ostentation." - Vogue.com

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