Happy Birthday, Mr. Valentino! Hamish Bowles pays tribute to the iconic designer, who turns 88 today.
He was only a teenager when he landed his first job in fashion in 1952, as an assistant to Jean Dessès. That Athenian-born couturier was famed for dressing both the crowned heads of Europe and a bevy of elegant actresses in his signature evening gowns, which often incorporated very fine needle-pleated draperies: Today, only the Valentino haute couture ateliers in Rome hold the secret of this art.
I remember them well: a sheath dress embroidered with Meissen china motifs with panels of yellow, mauve, and grey chiffon draped around the bodice, for instance, and another of chocolate velvet licked with turquoise coral branches and shrouded in a turquoise satin opera coat cuffed in sable. There was a dress with yards and yards of knife-pleated cornflower blue chiffon that looked as though he had dreamt it up for Elizabeth Taylor.
In 1991, however, I was not only orchestrating the photographs but writing the story and attending the festivities. I arrived in some trepidation to discover the designer whom I had so long admired in his studio in the Palazzo Mignanelli—a building so imposing that it then had a discreet entrance for haute couture clients just next to the top of the Spanish Steps, although its main entrance was in the square at the bottom, six stories below.
I photographed some of the archive pieces from Valentino’s retrospective for my story in his pretty apricot-colored house on the storied Appian Way. He had conceived the interiors with the legendary Renzo Mongiardino, and they were a riot of chinoiserie and orientalism, of tiger silk velvet, silk taffeta checks, and giant rose-patterned chintz.
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