It was the perfect setting for Natalia Vodianova’s Love Ball, The White Fairy Tale Love Ball. Valentino Garavani’s seventeenth-century Château de Wideville is a castle out of a fairy tale. Arriving in the dimming light of ten o’clock, after a long summer’s day, there it lies at the bottom of a hill framed by allees of immemorial trees forming curtains of green that suggest a magical forest beyond.
Guests were bidden to wear white or silver, and while not everyone got the memo (Daphne Guinness wore McQueen’s vintage rainbow-painted kimono for Givenchy couture, with full kabuki hair), the effect suggested Tsarist Saint Petersburg, when ladies wore spangled white gowns for the balls during the city’s White Nights.
Natalia wore a sweeping red taffeta gown created by the Russian designer Ulyana Sergeenko, and a parure of diamond snowflakes and pearls that she designed with Yulia Fosty Jewellery House.
The guests like, Tatiana Santo Domingo (worea pale lace Philip Treacy mask), Eugenie Niarchos (in a diamond coronet), Coco Brandolini and Margherita Missoni (all dressed in current or vintage Valentino) and looked like so many Chekhovian sisters.
Anne Hathaway, wore the exquisite white satin ruffled evening dress tipped with crystal teardrops that fans of Valentino. Looks so magical!
Vogue writes: “Natalia gave a moving speech which explained at length her charity’s current and future missions—to provide imaginatively designed and inspiring play areas for children across Russia. As a child, Natalia admitted that “my life was all about survival . . . I didn’t have time to dream.” Her beloved younger sister was born with developmental disabilities and as a result, her father left her mother, who worked four jobs to make ends meet and keep her challenged daughter at home, rather than consigning her to the uncertain care of state institutions. Natalia was so moved to discover on recent trips that the majority of children in state care today in her country still have families—and thus, her new goal, essentially, is to bring them back home.”
-Edisa.
{source: Vogue.com & Zimbo.com}
