At the heart of a lovely new look at Valentino is a lovely young woman--H.R.H. Princess Rosario of Bulgaria
The original nine Muses were Greek goddesses; in the fashion world, muses are no less divine. Audrey Hepburn's effortless elegance and heart stopping smile perfectly portrayed the couture of Hubert de Givenchy; vivacious Loulou de la Falaise is the longtime super stylish creative right hand of Yves Saint Laurent and designer of the accessories collections; witty, pencil-slim aristocratic beauty Ines de La Fressange, whom Karl Lagerfeld used to update Chanel, became a national French icon and then a designer herself.
Stunning Spanish-born Rosario Saxe-Coburg, Valentino's newly appointed muse and ambassador, is stepping out of the mold and bringing an irreverent shot of youth into the designer's $ 300 million fashion empire, which recently became part of the $ 1.4 billion financial and industrial conglomerate known as HdP.
Married to handsome H.R.H. Kyril of Bulgaria, Prince of Preslav, the 29-year old princess is a fashion outsider who combines being the mother of two delightful daughters with a job as an independent art consultant. She says one of her roles as a thoroughly modern muse is to show how Valentino's clothes work with "a normal life."
Not that Rosario looks like the girl next-door, exactly. Valentino women, from Elizabeth Taylor to Sharon Stone, are a glamorous coterie, and at a curvy, fabulous, 5 feet 8, Rosario is not exception. Swan-necked, high-cheekboned and a natural beauty, she has gaminelike brown hair and opalescent eyes as big as saucers, which change from jade green to gray blue to agate to what she's wearing. Nor is her life exactly humdrum.. With her husband, an investment banker who was recently named economic affairs adviser to the President of Bulgaria, the princess is sublimely onstage at a host of those media-magnetic royal occasions that pepper the European social calendar, such as Queen Elizabeth's 50th anniversary Ball at Windsor Castle, to which both Rosario and her friend Marie-Chantal of Greece wore Valentino ball gowns.
The Italian designer first encountered Rosario, then 18, on Majorca, where she was born and raised, the eldest of three daughters and a son. "With my mother and sisters, I always loved clothes, " she says, but then it was "the latest jeans, the latest moccasins." Valentino was on vacation, traveling aboard his yacht with a party of friends including Mikhail Baryshnikov, when he spotted Rosario at a party at the Palma Casino.
"All the young and beautiful aristocratic people from Spain were there," recalls the designer. Handsome, Brazilian-born Carlos Souza, who works in Valentino's international public relations office, was dispatched to make her acquaintance, and then asked her to dance. He still remembers his embarrassment when she responded to him, a total stranger, with and implacable "No," though they're now firm friends. Rosario's friendship with Valentino developed a few years later, after she was married, when she met the designer again in London and became both a client, and then, with her husband, a regular at his small dinner parties.
