The last ball of Valentino
Tulle, organza, muslin of silk marry the curves, strip the backs, underline the roundnesses, in an environment “harms of the Oscars” the Museum of decorative Arts, in Paris. Capital returns homage, of June 17 to September 21, with Valentino, cantor of glamour Hollywood, which withdraws at the end of (almost) fifty years of haute couture, after an ultimate collection, that of spring-be 2008, which was ovationnée in January, at the time of its last procession.
This retrospective, in two hundred and twenty models exposed out of two stages, of the dresses of great evening for the majority, brushes the history of the life of Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani, born in Voghera (Lombardy, Italy), said Valentino. It takes its first steps in Paris, in 1952, at Jean Dessès, then in Guy Laroche, before opening, in 1959, its own living room in Rome. It equipped most beautiful, of Liz Taylor in Rita Hayworth, Monica Vitti in Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn, of Sharon Stone with Cameron Diaz, which it cherishes.
From one window to another, the echoes of Hollywood, of Cannes and besides, festivals in official receptions and marriages princely, resound. One imagines Julia Roberts, receiving a Oscar in 2001 for the film Erin Brockovich, only against all, of Steven Soderbergh, moulded in this black velvet tended of white satin ribbons like an arrow on his nape of the neck. Or Gwyneth Paltrow, in 2002, with the Festival of film of Venice, very sexy in this sleeve Worsens in point lace lattice.
The behaviour of married of Jackie Kennedy with Aristote Onassis, lace ivory blouse rebrodée and pleated skirt in Georgette pancake, which it carried in Skorpios on October 20, 1968 and reproduced nearly forty times for customers, marks the beginning of the dedication of Valentino. Among this famous “white collection”, the coat of trapezoid day, to the pockets encrusted with a gilded metal V, will launch the use of the logo as marks luxury: in full May 68, the dressmaker had opened, which occurred Montaigne, his first shop of ready-made clothes.
Forty years later, at 75 years, strapped in a gray costume beads, more bronzed and more young person that never, the emperor of the Italian luxury whirls between the wood mannequins wearing her invaluable dresses. It makes the presentations as if it were about the “remake” of one gala evening and says its happiness: “I am honoured and charmed to be regarded almost as a brother by France. There is all that I created since the beginning, the embroideries, volumes, the transparencies, the reasons leopard, summarizes the dressmaker. The first jacket streaks some (1963), the draped first obtained with two thousand needles, the red dress of Life Magazine (1964) which returned to me famous to America, and which I did not cease repeating.”
SAME HISTORY
In the windows, its dresses dialogue and are answered without one being able to go back none to it. Because there is its secrecy, and it does not hide any. Unceasingly it will rewrite the same history, with the image of this first red dress long-line bra draped and pricked of rosebuds, gone back to 1959, of which it will make thirty versions, in forty-nine years of career, thirty models of the same red, all different, which it made ravel with final its last collection.
_ “it me have give freehand, “I have do my work, with you to do yours”, me have it say”, tell Pamela Golbin, conservative in chief of collection contemporary of mode and textile with Museum of art decorative. And the police chief of the exposure to explain the repatriation of the files in Rome: not far from three thousand parts, first selection of four hundred parts, the one year work. “It did not on always the dates there on clothing. It was not question of chronology, but of topics. It always drew clothing with the mode, without being closely dependent there. In its course, there is a total reality which is completely exemplary. I wanted to make the analysis of a career instead of brushing a fresco of it”, summarizes Pamela Golbin.
LIGHTNESS, FLUIDITY
Since 1959, Valentino establishes its stylistic vocabulary, which it will not cease refining and affirming with the passing of years. From where these “Topics and variations”, title of the exposure, which are its signature: volumes (in 3D with optical illusions), graphics, flat tints of color, textures. And a pallet reduced to the white, black and red, which forces the dynamics of the silhouette. He works the transparency, lightness, fluidity, to keep only the gasoline of clothing, removes the linings so that the dresses run on the body.
“Valentino wrote an international fashion. It knew to associate Italian know-how with its techniques specific - as rolled of silk to the hand - to the comfort of the American ready-made clothes. In the United States, clothing is lighter, more comfortable, which does not mean lack of behaviour”, observes the police chief of the exposure. Beautiful of night in a few grams of silk, here what promised Valentino with the women.
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