Keeper of the Couture Flame
By Suzy Menkes. Excerpt from the book 'Valentino. Una grande storia Italiana'
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Then there is that other modern runway: the red carpet, where Valentino's teenage dream turns into reality with each Oscar or Golden Globe season and with the stars he has dressed from Gwyneth Paltrow to Julia Roberts. There are also sweet moments, when Valentino and Giancarlo escape on their yacht, ski in Gstaad or enjoy the fruits of success. Far from being a tortured creator seeking to chill out in a wilderness, Valentino shares his success with his friends and opens his homes to them. Each summer, in the Paris couture season, he invites guests to dinner at his French Château de Wideville whose restoration inspired the French government to bestow on Valentino the latest in a long line of honors: the Légion d'Honneur.
The social soirées are emblematic of Valentino's character: an un-pompous Italian ease in the buffet of seasonal delicacies; an eclectic mix of international guests; and the bella figura of the designer himself in his impeccable Caraceni tailoring.
Who are the couture clients? Glamorous and globally minded Americans from a country that Valentino conquered so long ago and from which he has lost so many friends, including Jackie Onassis and Nan Kempner. Then there is European high society—and none so dear to the designer as the new generation of Crown Princesses from Marie-Chantal of Greece to Mette-Marit of Norway. If fashion designers mostly divide into the romantic and the classic, Valentino fits into both categories. His work, like his life, is a fusion of rigor and grandeur. The symbol of Valentino—the one that captures the opulence and light-hearted grace of Rococo—is the bow. Always pristine and perfectly proportioned, it edges a cardigan in soft satin, flutters down the backbone as an organza butterfly or drapes at the bosom in slithering silk. A bow is also identified in the mind with a gift, as if women were wrapped and decorated to celebrate their beauty and fragility.
That succulent sweetness—the weightless fabrics, whipped-cream frills and pretty make-up—has not always been in fashion. Such arrant femininity was a defiant challenge in the minimalist era and to the years when androgyny was on the agenda. The harmony and classic beauty that Valentino strives for went right out of fashion during the modernist period, just as it was expelled from contemporary art. (Although in both, there is currently a restitution of earlier values.) The words "edgy" and "cool" are anathema to a creator who has never hidden his personal distaste for destroyed and disheveled looks.
But it is the mark of a great designer not to be blown by the winds of cultural change, but to take forward a personal vision and aesthetic. And Valentino is now dressing daughters as he might still dress their glamorous grandmothers. What did Valentino invent in fashion? The answer is a modern glamour that has traveled from the jet set to the private plane era. And at its beating heart is an atelier in Rome, where exquisite dresses are made to traditional standards and presented like a sumptuous cake, as the seamstress unveils her creation for the maestro's approval. Valentino is now the last link in a chain of high-fashion history—the only couturier who has been apprenticed to the past and is still in absolute creative control of a house that he himself founded.
The young Italian stripling has become—by default, but also by desire—the keeper of couture's purest flame. And he does it with joy—con brio!
Suzy Menkes is fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune.
Page [1] [2]
Page [1] [2]
Then there is that other modern runway: the red carpet, where Valentino's teenage dream turns into reality with each Oscar or Golden Globe season and with the stars he has dressed from Gwyneth Paltrow to Julia Roberts. There are also sweet moments, when Valentino and Giancarlo escape on their yacht, ski in Gstaad or enjoy the fruits of success. Far from being a tortured creator seeking to chill out in a wilderness, Valentino shares his success with his friends and opens his homes to them. Each summer, in the Paris couture season, he invites guests to dinner at his French Château de Wideville whose restoration inspired the French government to bestow on Valentino the latest in a long line of honors: the Légion d'Honneur.
The social soirées are emblematic of Valentino's character: an un-pompous Italian ease in the buffet of seasonal delicacies; an eclectic mix of international guests; and the bella figura of the designer himself in his impeccable Caraceni tailoring.
Who are the couture clients? Glamorous and globally minded Americans from a country that Valentino conquered so long ago and from which he has lost so many friends, including Jackie Onassis and Nan Kempner. Then there is European high society—and none so dear to the designer as the new generation of Crown Princesses from Marie-Chantal of Greece to Mette-Marit of Norway. If fashion designers mostly divide into the romantic and the classic, Valentino fits into both categories. His work, like his life, is a fusion of rigor and grandeur. The symbol of Valentino—the one that captures the opulence and light-hearted grace of Rococo—is the bow. Always pristine and perfectly proportioned, it edges a cardigan in soft satin, flutters down the backbone as an organza butterfly or drapes at the bosom in slithering silk. A bow is also identified in the mind with a gift, as if women were wrapped and decorated to celebrate their beauty and fragility.
That succulent sweetness—the weightless fabrics, whipped-cream frills and pretty make-up—has not always been in fashion. Such arrant femininity was a defiant challenge in the minimalist era and to the years when androgyny was on the agenda. The harmony and classic beauty that Valentino strives for went right out of fashion during the modernist period, just as it was expelled from contemporary art. (Although in both, there is currently a restitution of earlier values.) The words "edgy" and "cool" are anathema to a creator who has never hidden his personal distaste for destroyed and disheveled looks.
But it is the mark of a great designer not to be blown by the winds of cultural change, but to take forward a personal vision and aesthetic. And Valentino is now dressing daughters as he might still dress their glamorous grandmothers. What did Valentino invent in fashion? The answer is a modern glamour that has traveled from the jet set to the private plane era. And at its beating heart is an atelier in Rome, where exquisite dresses are made to traditional standards and presented like a sumptuous cake, as the seamstress unveils her creation for the maestro's approval. Valentino is now the last link in a chain of high-fashion history—the only couturier who has been apprenticed to the past and is still in absolute creative control of a house that he himself founded.
The young Italian stripling has become—by default, but also by desire—the keeper of couture's purest flame. And he does it with joy—con brio!
Suzy Menkes is fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune.
Page [1] [2]
Valentino Garavani. Una grande storia italiana.
Hardcover + Box, 33 x 44 cm (13 x 17.3 in.), 738 pages
$ 1800.00
$ 1800.00
The glamorous life and work of Valentino Garavani. Limited to 2,000 numbered copies, each numbered and signed by fashion designer Valentino Garavani.
Valentino in his workshop in Via Gregoriana. Photo (c) Agenzia Grazia Neri.