Valentino Garavani's first name was his signature, his brand and his bond. Along with Karl Lagerfeld and Giorgio Armani, Valentino was a colossus on the high couture runways, a titan of continental fashion design from the 1960s (when he dressed Jackie Kennedy) into the '00s. According to the documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor, the designer was less and less the master in his own house since the '90s and finally, with the writing of the future on the wall, bid the industry adieu. Better to walk away with head held high than be carried out kicking and screaming.
Filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer followed Valentino around for more than a year, with his permission but sometimes to his annoyance. Things were in the works, in back of the back stages of the glittering fashion shows, and Valentino sometimes sputtered angrily to Tyrnauer: Turn off the camera or get lost! The debonair charm was brittle at moments. Already a lion in winter, Valentino was confounded by a changing landscape, a new ecosystem inhospitable for towering figures of self-invention but amenable to financial predators and the herd animals of drudgery.
For followers of fashion, The Last Emperor will be an interesting look into the career and working methods of one of high couture's brightest lights. Inspired in childhood by the Hollywood movies of the 1940s, Valentino claims that from an early age he wanted nothing but to design costumes for glamorous women. And what do women want? "Women want to be beautiful," he tells an interviewer. He saw his life's role as a weaver of beautiful dreams, gossamer drapery for the imagination.
The Last Emperor shows Valentino sketching gowns on paper, supervising his seamstresses down to the final pleat, surrounded by multilingual major-domos and a magnet to stars and paparazzi. Valentino rose in the era of La DolceVita, the swinging '60s on a foundation of aristocratic European taste, but times have changed and values with it. The gray minions of investment bankers and equity firms gained control over the House of Valentino, which for them is nothing but a prestige brand name among corporate holdings. The departure of Valentino from the company carrying his name signals that nowadays fashion-like music and many other businesses-is dominated by faceless corporations, challenged only by artisans carving out niche audiences. Independent, high-end designers commanding international cachet, such as Valentino, may be going out of fashion.
