Valentino Archive: the collection of iconic looks

Valentino Archive
Collection
By Suzy Menkes

I might have been in a Paris café, sitting at a table with friends and watching the world go by. A very glamorous group of finely dressed women were walking at street level until they all stepped out on to that favourite French word: a boulevard.

Was this the first time I had seen a Valentino show in “normal” territory - when it is usually on hallowed grounds of grand and gracious buildings; or in a carefully prepared site?

This imaginative show by Pierpaolo Piccioli made me think of the past: the remembrance of Mr Valentino’s catwalk show, stunning the audience in Florence’s Sala Bianca - and setting off his career - more than half a century ago.

There were other moments of grandeur. So many of them. Marisa Berenson smothered in jewels with a whiff of North Africa; or a model’s scarlet dress sliced down one leg to be made for walking. One thing was sure: Pierpaolo, as current creative director, was dramatically modernising the Valentino collection.

The show was named “Valentino Rendez Vous”. But was this more a shake-up of the past to step forward to the future? After all, Mr Valentino himself had never presented high fashion in lowly streets.

I was wrong. Totally mistaken. For in front of me - woven into the collection - were six pieces from the Valentino archive: a fresh white dress with frog-form sleeves, re-made from when it was worn by Marisa Berenson, actress and granddaughter of Elsa Schiaparelli.

Then there was something that I would not have expected from Valentino: an animal print coat and stockings from 1967 worn over a bra top and shorts - all chosen for unforgettable bean-top Veruschka, And when was this from -1985? Blue jeans!

Pierpaolo is famous for his poetic mood boards. With art, with portraits and with Catholicism, they express with the designer’s own hands the inspiration of the past and how that evolves to become present.

But this work was different, for instead of being inspired by a far-distant history, the current designer has proved that Valentino himself was always ahead of his time. The collection of images from today meld into what came before.

What do the archives show? Primarily, how much further towards the future Mr Valentino became in reality, than just in the elegance for which he is remembered. But it also proves, in an era when new designers take over exhibiting brands, that it is a particular skill to make the past present.

What does that mean? Looking at the photographs of then and now - today’s clothes are the same. Yet they are now interpreted by different photographers and with contemporary models - and, of course, up-to-the-moment hair and make up.

But for me, watching that walk on the streets of Paris, Pierpaolo Piccioli proved that it is possible to be both timeless - and modern.