Valentino

Triumphant or disgraced queens, empresses in glory or in exile, First Ladies brimming with happiness or overwhelmed by tragic events, brides who make history and widows who are subjected to it. Their choice of clothing is never random – whether in glory or pain, in cunning or seriousness, in showiness and representative duty, in worldly splendour: their outfits are called on to enhance fact and emotion, crucial instruments to forevermore express what the woman who wore them wished to express at that moment in time. Valentino’s clothes mysteriously act as proxy, underscoring specific figures and fashionable facts, their historic connection to past and future alike, their being a non-secondary present that will not be cancelled but, instead, a monument to itself, to its importance and essential nature. This volume brings together drawings, sketches, costumes and creations so as to reconstruct the artistic path of one of the greatest artists of all time.