Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity presented by The Museum of the City of New York is the first exhibition to trace the career of the legendary and contemporary designer. Her quintessential New York success story arriving in the city (1922) as an immigrant and reinventing herself as ‘Madame Valentina’ to exemplify success and glamour while inventing her own history from Russia.
Valentina’s popularity with classically inspired minimalism brought a striking contrast to beaded flapper dresses, heavily padded and decorated styles by her contemporaries. Dressing celebrities captured the spotlight while Valentina’s best PR generator was herself. Below are still shots from the Edward R. Murrow interview with Valentina looped in the exhibition.
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The Designer must know what life is today. He must go everywher-even to the moon. He must know the ways, the manners, the culture, the literature of every country. For fashion reflects, as in a mirror, the whole life of a people. Designing clothes is no nonsense.
Valentina
A designer is their best salesperson and Madame Valentina definitely proves that point modeling her ‘convertible’ dress design. Suggestively undressing for the camera Valentina converts her daytime look into a dinner dress complete with decolletage. My favorite segment is Valentina pulling away her full skirt forming a bustle to reveal a shorter length so that she can ‘make it up the 3 flights of stairs to her friend’s fashionable late dinner party’.
The installation is filled with memorable quotes at the top of this post along with ‘My salon is like a clinic where I treat clients for bad taste’ and ‘Even ugly women can be glamorous.’ Rizzoli has published the companion book to the exhibition and read Cathy Horyn’s thoughts from the show posted On the Runway.
I wish a company today would adopt some of her slogans like making even ugly women glamorous….
As a foreigner to America, Valentina’s story is truly inspiring to me. She had a great way of selling her designs. I absolutely love the red gown.
Looks like a very interesting exhibit! I’m not that familiar with her work in particular but it seems like she had a very interesting personality.
I love the opening quote. As a designer you must know what’s going on in the world around you, the arts, literatures, politics, economics, etc. in order to create a fabulous collection a designer cannot be naive.
I heard about this exhibition and can’t wait to see it. There’s something to say about functional multi-purpose clothing; you can have that show piece work on and off the runway.
Wow,thanks a lot for copying this from the exhibition.
I hope one day the video will make it’s way to the internet.
Looks exciting! I hope I have the opportunity to check it out!
That seems like a really great exhibit. I’m very interested to see her convertible dress. She was a very smart designer.
looks great! I’d love to see it.
i think it’s fitting to use something like this as an example of good design in times like these, because we should all be inspired by the use of innovation to make design multi-functional for the wearer. the more use a woman can get out of dress, the more likely it is she will want to buy it.
I think she is such a talented designer! I am sure that the dress she was showing was a huge hit because two dresses for the price of one!
How cool! Her story is pioneering- she was a true success at a time when women were treated differently than their male designer counterparts.
She was a pioneer- a true success in a time when male designers were given much more attention than their female peers.