I should start off by saying that I had high expectations. Scratch that, I had ridiculously high expectations for the haute couture collection that Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli presented on December 10th at the former Whitney Museum of American Art to celebrate the opening of the new Valentino flagship store at 693 Fifth Avenue. As it very often happens – remember, RIDICULOUSLY high – my expectations were not met, not even close, but this does not mean that the 47-look collection that walked down the runway wasn’t enjoyable or nice. And this is exactly the problem: lately Valentino has given us plenty of perfectly nice, cute, ethereal looks and very few “wow” pieces and I really miss those days. The show, titled “Sala Bianca 945”,  was supposed to be an homage to the first collection that Valentino himself presented at the Sala Bianca in Florence in 1968 – a collection which included the dress that Jacqueline Kennedy worn  to get married to Aristotele Onassis-  and then revisited for his spring 2007 couture collection, therefore the all-white looks (with just a bit of gold) and a recreation of sorts of the Sala Bianca in the Whitney Museum. There were some interesting pieces, for instance a short, intricate, Elizabethan tulle dress or a star- studded, short-sleeved coat, and the gowns were beautiful, as expected, but all in all the collection just seemed an all-white version of looks that we’ve already seen and come to expect from the duo. The designers specified that they will still show at Paris’ Haute Couture Fashion Week this coming January: I promise to keep my expectations low if they promise to wow us.