Valentino, Retrospective: Past/Present/Future

Editorial

Valentino from Speaker TV on Vimeo.

When: 7 August - 14 November 2010
Where: Queensland Art Gallery
Details: (07) 3840 7303

Not content to rest on its laurels after a very successful exhibition devoted to hats, the Queensland Art Gallery presents a retrospective of the Italian fashion house Valentino, which has defined fashion trends for the past half century.

The exhibition originated at the Parisian decorative arts museum, Les Arts Décoratifs, and was developed to honour the 45th and final collection by the fashion house's founder Valentino Garavani who was in large part responsible for defining the high culture dress regulations of the mass-media celebrity era.

Celebrity and fashion of course drive each other in tight circles, and of the hundred or so garments on display, a number possess the gravitas of having been worn by royalty - not simple European royalty, but American royalty (Elizabeth Taylor, Julia Roberts, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) and even Australian royalty (Nicole Kidman).

If Valentino has a signature style it might be described as one of striking silhouettes, fearless use of texture and boldness of colour - a baroque voice in a minimalist age. The exhibition's visit to Australia is exclusive to the Queensland Art Gallery, and should be seen as more than a simple presentation of garments. Working with perhaps the two most difficult media - fabric and the human body - the house of Valentino has created hundreds of original and inventive sculptural pieces, alive with colour, texture and grace.

Robert Stevenson, Citysearch