La Dolce Vita, the Valentino Way
'Fashion is not always seen as an art, and designers were not yet artists,' said Giancarlo Giammetti, the founder, with Valentino Garavani, of the Valentino brand. He was speaking on video from Rome about the fashion house they created in 1960.
This month a large book about the house came out. 'Valentino: A Grand Italian Epic' is a 576-page tome devoted to all things Valentino: drawings of gowns, archival photographs, advertisements, fashion features and many anecdotes from celebrity fans.
Elizabeth Taylor discovered the label when she was filming 'Cleopatra' in Rome. Clients like Audrey Hepburn and Nan Kempner liked how classic the classics were. Mr. Garavani never embraced fads and stuck to what the critic Suzy Menkes described in the introduction as a penchant for 'frothy, sensual, sweet-toothed glamour.'
Matt Tyrnauer, who directed the 2009 documentary 'Valentino: The Last Emperor,' said in an interview that the book shows the house's role in the invention of fashion P.R. and modern advertising.
'Fashion was the most rarefied world for a certain set of women of a certain class who patronized these houses, who were not interested in publicity or marketing because they didn't need it, but the world was changing,' said Mr. Tyrnauer, who is credited as the author of the book (Ms. Menkes wrote the introduction). 'Giancarlo Giammetti was at the vanguard of that.'
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