Jackie Kennedy said, “I’ll live 100 years” Valentino Garavani Back in 1966, he almost made it. The last emperor of the fashion world passed away last Monday at the age of 93. Everyone has seen it all. The dress, the muse and the show were immortalized. It’s a textbook success to have your skills recognized so highly. But being widely loved by the industry you helped build, by old allies, and by new eyes is true success. Not only does it come with a beautiful dress, it also comes with a beautiful Valentino dress. There was branding before stitching, and there was branding after stitching. Even before we got word about what that actually means, Valentino built his world, controlled it, and made sure it outlived him.
Red and Valentino Rosso are two completely different things
Authentic brand signatures are very difficult to find. It’s almost impossible to own something as wide as colors. The first Valentino collection in 1959 featured a red dress called “La Fiesta” and from that moment on, it was easy. But it was during a performance of Bizet’s Carmen at the Barcelona Opera House that Valentino first became aware of the power of the shadow. “All the costumes on stage were red…The women in the box were mostly dressed in red, hunched over like geraniums on the balcony. Even the seats and curtains were red…I realized that next to white and black, there is no better color.”
Over the decades, this house not only repeated the shade, but also solidified it. “For the House of Valentino, red is more than just a color; it is a timeless mark, a logo, an emblematic element of the brand, a value.” “A woman who wears red is always wonderful. She is the perfect image of a heroine,” Garavani declared. If your brand has a strong visual language, you can spot it from a mile away, and if it’s red, you can spot it from Rome.
Keeps you as close as you watch and as far away as you want
Valentino understood that luxury is about distance. When fashion begins to seek to be loved, he is out of reach, and there is nothing the human brain desires more than what it cannot have. Today, fashion craves desire, and its success is often measured in hashtags and mentions, but Valentino never disguised his intimacy with his audience. Some might argue that he was using hashtags, but they were just named Audrey Hepburn, Princess Diana, Carla Bruni, I get that, and honestly, I kind of get it too. Let’s just say that, not for Valentino but for the world, these “hashtags” were very few and far between and they all certainly had red dresses in their closets that attracted attention.
Beauty is driven by systems, and systems are driven by work.
Valentino’s dresses were not magical, but the product of a carefully selected system and long hours of work. It may have seemed easy, but behind the “natural” look of any industry, every detail, every stitch, every button is constantly checked. He trusted the workshop, the fittings, the craftsmen, the runway, but he also controlled them. If your name is on someone’s clothes tag or someone’s paycheck, you better invest yourself even more. Hiring brains is the easy way out. The best work hides itself, but it does everything.
Knowing when to quit is your greatest control
It takes more courage to leave the fashion world than to enter it. Too soon and it will disappear. Too late and the value is lost. Leave in 2008, and the brand will outlive its creator. Valentino stuck to his ideas. As the industry began to change, he made room for new talent and stepped aside before the world got tired of him. Would we really feel this nostalgia if we hadn’t been away for nearly 20 years?
Source: Our Culture – ourculturemag.com
