Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring stared out from Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli's mood board this season. At a preview, the Valentinodesigners were making connections between what they called the severe yet sensual portraits of the Dutch masters and their exquisite new collection for Fall. "We wanted to capture women in a private moment," Chiuri said. "In this show, the face is very important"—as it was for Vermeer and company. Making a study of white collars, Chiuri and Piccioli added them to many of their familiar looks. The collars came in laser-cut leather encrusted with beads or in "Calvinist" plain cotton piqué, and they decorated the simplest pieces, like long-sleeve A-line shifts in wool and short alpaca coats, as well as more ornate creations, including a tulip embroidered lace gown, and another elaborately traced in a Delft ceramics pattern. This is Valentino we're talking about, of course, so in the end there was no lack of intricacy in the details. There were gowns galore, many of unsurpassed beauty, and some too beautiful not to bring up. We're thinking especially of the Delft-inspired embroideries and a shorter Delft-like knit. But to prattle on describing them would be to defeat the point. They weren't the news; the austere grace was.