Balmain under Christophe Decarnin was known for its glitzy style and even though the designer was absent at Balmain Fall/Winter 2011/2012 Fashion Show the collection is said to be designed according to his vision. There is lots of glitz and dazzle in the collection to jazz up your fall wardrobe with.

Balmain Fall/Winter 2011/2012 collection is almost too shiny with all those glitzy pants, dazzling jackets, and mirror-encrusted dresses. Though Balmain is known for its dazzling ready-to-wear the collection has too much of glitter and needs a bit more solid texture to nicely balance out all the sparkling stuff. There are some basic items though but these are too made of glossy fabric. Nevertheless there are some great pieces in Balmain Fall/Winter 2011/2012 collection I want to show you.

Giambattista Valli’s Spring 2012 Couture collection is fantastic, one of the best we have seen so far. It features amazing ballgowns, red-carpet-worth floor-length dresses and chic cocktail outfits. To finish the looks the designer topped models’ heads with flower-inspired headpieces.

Giambattista Valli was born to design couture. I am not saying his prêt-a-porter collections are bad. They are fresh and interesting. But his couture ranges (two of them have been presented so far) are absolutely incredible. The one he unveiled for Spring 2012 left me breathless.

Giambattista Valli’s ballgowns impressed me the most. Pompous, luxurious and sophisticated at the same time these came as the climax of the designer’s Spring 2012 Couture show. Floral prints were amazing and the colors looked great.

Other floor length gowns were more demure but they were also chic and exquisite which automatically put them into the range of future red carpet choices. The drapery was outstanding and finished with golden flowers used as necklaces, and collars it created an incredible effect.

Just like his more sumptuous designs Giambattista Valli’s cocktail dresses and ensembles from the Spring 2012 Couture collection were clearly inspired by flowers which realized in a variety of patterns and lovely details that made the garments look interesting.

For so many years in succession and from so many stylists I’ve heard that horizontal stripes are complete evil that ruins slim shape and makes one look fat even if she is naturally very slender. I always obeyed the rule without even checking if it was really that bad to wear hoops. However, a couple of days ago I read an article about a research based on the sliming effects of horizontal stripes and I was shocked to know that all my life I missed the opportunity to look great in stripes only because someone told me those were bad for appearance of my body. Now I say: GIRLS, HORIZONTAL STRIPES ARE SLIMMING AND FLATTERING!

Of course I couldn’t believe I was such a fool for such a long period of time and googled photos of stars wearing hoops. They did look very good in those. Alas and hurray!

Dailymail.co.uk also wrote about this. They even went further. They asked their readers to wear dresses in both horizontal and vertical stripes to compare which types of stripes looked better. Most of respondent said hoops were better. And the photographs clearly demonstrate that.

Well, girls, this fashion rule is totally broken. And now I wonder which other rules are senseless…