Thursday, 24 January 2008

Arrivederci Valentino


Last night’s show was filled with greatest hits — the narrow torsos, high busts, slim shoulders, feminine suiting and a spectacular finale of Valentino red evening dresses. It reminded everyone why Valentino outlasted all his contemporaries.

He did not over-license his name or succumb to drugs and certainly not to gimmicks. Fashionable but not fashion statements, classy but not dull, elegant but not stiff, a good Valentino evening dress will last a girl for ever. His successor, the Italian designer Alessandra Facchinetti, who was fired from Gucci, has a lot to live up to.


says Lisa Armstrong in the Times

I would like to do something serious, I don't say more serious than fashion


Valentino's final collection. The last great name from the Golden Age of Couture retires. And tells you what fashion is.

Watch the video

Thought for the day


Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie.

Conrad Aiken