Fashion history on the web
Virtual Valentino: Famed designer launches digital museum to recapture fashion'sdreams
As one of the most revered designers of the 20th century, Valentino Garavani was always ahead of his time. Now in the 21st century, he remains a step ahead of the pack.
Although the perpetually suntanned designer everyone knows simply as Valentino retired in 2008, he has been the subject of an acclaimed documentary, Valentino: The Last Emperor, and was a beloved fixture at the most recent New York fashion week, where he was front row at the Diane von Furstenberg and Oscar de la Renta shows.
The 79-year-old designer was in the spotlight again on Monday when he unveiled a spectacular virtual museum that is available to anyone with a computer and a love of fashion.
"This is exactly what users online are looking for — they're looking for more content about art, about culture, about fashion," said Amit Sood, creator of the Google Art Project.
The free desktop application reveals the Valentino Garavani Virtual Museum as a 3-D palazzo, with over 5,000 images from the designer's spectacular career. Constructed like a splashy video game, technology allows the viewer to examine 300 dresses, often worn by the rich and the famous, in a 360-degree view, along with original sketches, videos and quotes.
Among the iconic items: Jacqueline Kennedy in a Valentino-designed wedding dress when she married Aristotle Onassis in 1968, Julia Roberts in the vintage Valentino gown she wore when the won the Best Actress Oscar in 2001, and the couture gown Elizabeth Taylor wore to the premiere of Spartacus in 1960.
The virtual museum, which took two years and several million dollars to create, contains multiple galleries with shiny floors and open lattice ceilings that reveal white clouds and blue sky. Each room is centered around a theme (animal prints), a decade or a color. Of course, there's a room devoted to Valentino's iconic red.
Students of fashion are able to examine the haute couture details by rotating the dress and zoom in on even the tiniest stitches or taking a master class with the master. "This is exactly what users online are looking for — they're looking for more content about art, about culture, about fashion," said Amit Sood, creator of the Google Art Project, which brings museums and the artwork they host online.
At a press conference at New York's Museum of Modern Art hosted by Anne Hathaway with a virtual ribbon cutting by Hugh Jackman — all livestreamed on the web — Valentino admitted he isn't terribly high tech.
“I arrived at one of my houses and wanted to watch a DVD, and I had to call down to the town for a guy to come help me play it," he said. "But this is about the future.”
Valentino's longtime business partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, who spearheaded the virtual museum project, lamented the fact that fashion has become a business where the bottom line has become more important than a designer's vision.
"We left fashion because dreams were not there anymore," Giammetti said. "I think you can capture a certain dream in a virtual museum."
Good news for the designer's fans: Valentino said he plans to offer "unbelievable drawings of new creations" to the virtual museum. "I still love design and clothes."
