Valentino Garavani

Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani (born May 11 1932), best known as Valentino, is an Italian fashion designer and founder of the Valentino SpAbrand and company. His main lines were Valentino, Valentino Garavani, Valentino Roma, and R.E.D. Valentino.

Who, like all megastars, is known simply by his first name -is Italy’s greatest couturier and one of the most respected designers showing in Paris. While wannabe glamour girls lust after his V-logo belts and bejewelled sandals, to his loyal following of moneyed couture clients Valentino is synonymous with showstopping evening dresses, which are immaculately cut in lean, feminine lines with dramatic flourishes such as ruffles, romantic embroideries and judicious use of his favourite shade of bright red.

Valentino travelled to Paris at just 17 and, following studies at the Chambre Syndicale de la Mode, was apprenticed to Jean Desses and Guy Laroche. In 1959 he returned to Italy to establish his own atelier on Via Condotti in central Rome; Elizabeth Taylor, in town to film ‘Spartacus’, was one of Valentino’s earliest clients.

In 1963, he launched his first full collection, to universal acclaim, at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, and by 1967 he had won the Neiman Marcus Award, the first of many accolades. Appearances on the covers of both Time and Life magazines followed, and in 1968 Valentino was chosen by Jackie Kennedy to design the dress for her wedding to Aristotle Onassis.

Over the years the perfectly-groomed designer has dressed the most privileged women of the day, including Princess Margaret, Marella Agnelli and Begum Aga Khan. In 2002 his Hollywood credentials were re-affirmed when Julia Roberts wore an elegant black-and-white vintage Valentino dress to the Oscars.Valentino has been honoured by the governments of Italy, where he was awarded the Cavaliere di Gran Croce(1986) and France, which decorated him as a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur (2005).

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Fashion

Fashion is commonly used to describe a style of clothing worn by most of people in a country. A fashion usually remains popular for 1-3 years then replaced by another fashion. A clothing style may be introduced as a fashion, but its use becomes a custom after being handed down from generation to generation. A fashion that comes and goes is called a Fad. 

Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person. Clothing is made up of all types of material cotton, rayon, spandex and polyester and they are just the few used. Clothing can be designed or decorated with all types of images ang colors. It has the power to transform an image and make a social statement. 

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Clothing Fashions

Early Western travelers, whether to Persia, Turkey or China frequently remark on the absence of changes in fashion there, and observers from these other cultures comment on the unseemly pace of Western fashion, which many felt suggested an instability and lack of order in Western culture. The Japanese Shogun’s secretary boasted (not completely accurately) to a Spanish visitor in 1609 that Japanese clothing had not changed in over a thousand years. 

However in Ming China, for example, there is considerable evidence for rapidly changing fashions in Chinese clothing. Changes in costume often took place at times of economic or social change (such as in ancient Rome and the medieval Caliphate), but then a long period without major changes followed. This occurred in Moorish Spain during the 8th century, when the famous musician Ziryab introduced sophisticated clothing-styles based on seasonal and daily timings from his native Baghdad and his own inspiration to Córdoba in Al-Andalus.

The beginnings of the habit in Europe of continual and increasingly rapid change in clothing styles can be fairly reliably dated to the middle of the 14th century, to which historians including James Laver and Fernand Braudel date the start of Western fashion in clothing. The most dramatic manifestation was a sudden drastic shortening and tightening of the male over-garment, from calf-length to barely covering the buttocks, sometimes accompanied with stuffing on the chest to look bigger. This created the distinctive Western male outline of a tailored top worn over leggings or trousers.

The pace of change accelerated considerably in the following century, and women and men’s fashion, especially in the dressing and adorning of the hair, became equally complex and changing. Art historians are therefore able to use fashion in dating images with increasing confidence and precision, often within five years in the case of 15th century images. Initially changes in fashion led to a fragmentation of what had previously been very similar styles of dressing across the upper classes of Europe, and the development of distinctive national styles.

Modern Westerners have a wide choice available in the selection of their clothes. What a person chooses to wear can reflect that person’s personality or likes. When people who have cultural status start to wear new or different clothes a fashion trend may start. People who like or respect them may start to wear clothes of a similar style. This style is created by many fashion designers around the world.

Fashions may vary considerably within a society according to age, social class, generation, occupation, and geography as well as over time. If, for example, an older person dresses according to the fashion of young people, he or she may look ridiculous in the eyes of both young and older people. The terms fashionista and fashion victim refer to someone who slavishly follows current fashions.

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