VALENTINO’S NEW VISION After the retirement and 45 years of fashion
Now that Valentino is retired the company may turn toward another direction, a hipper, younger and yes, cheaper line. Not sure if this means more commercial and a bit less couture, I guess we shall see what the new management and design team rolls out.
They do have plans that include doubling sales, attracting many new clients and plenty of expansions.
VALENTINO is rolling with the momentum of last year’s changes - its takeover by private equity firm Permira in July, and the retirement of its founding father - to push the business onwards and upwards - and attract a younger, more trend-focused clientèle to the brand.
Sassi has announced broad-ranging expansion plans, which include doubling sales and tripling accessories sales over the next five years - but the most intriguing action point is its desire to attract a new kind of Valentino woman, under the leadership of the house’s new head of design, Alessandra Facchinetti.
“When Valentino was still around, everything was done to support the designer and his needs, and now we’re doing the same for the current design team and their new vision,” Sassi tells WWD. “The only way to woo a trendier and more price-conscious clientele is with younger looks with more accessible price points.” (May 12 2008, AM)
Leisa Barnett
If anyone missed the retirement, here is the New York Times article about the retirement of Valentino after an absolute lifetime in fashion and the tanning bed…
AS happens with most final acts, Valentino Garavani’s career was over before it could be fully absorbed. On Wednesday night, at the Rodin Museum, he closed the spring 2008 haute couture collections and at the same time ended 45 years in fashion. The models wore identical red dresses for the finale, so that the room seemed bathed in his favorite color. The audience stood, the applause started, and Valentino walked briskly to the end of the runway, dry-eyed and tanned from a ski holiday in Gstaad.
One of the locomotives of Valentino’s career, and that as well of his partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, was that he allowed the media — and, by extension, the public — to see how lavishly he lived, whether in Rome, London or Gstaad. Although he regarded himself as a serious-minded designer, trained in Paris, few of his contemporaries seemed to derive as much pleasure from their lives. It showed in the clothes he made.
As the milliner Philip Treacy, who did the hats for the final show, said, “He’s the only designer who lived the life that people think designers should live.”
Yet many of the television and wire-service reporters gathered behind ropes outside the Rodin, or jamming into the backstage area afterward, were not there for the story. They were there for the sound bite. Stopping Mr. Giammetti backstage, a television reporter said, her voice rising for effect: “Tonight’s the final show for you and Mr. Valentino. How do you think it went?”
The smile on his face could not be read positively. “Very well,” Mr. Giammetti replied, looking in the direction of Valentino and the mob of photographers around him. “Very good.”
A temptation to say only the obvious and the necessary was precisely what the final bow of Valentino elicited, and to that extent it felt scripted. Last July, in Rome, Valentino and Mr. Giammetti celebrated the company’s 45th anniversary with an incredible weekend-long party. In a way, Marie-Chantal of Greece said, that was the real send-off. She was with her husband, Pavlos, and her in-laws, the former monarchs of Greece. “I think Rome was the big finale, and I’m seeing tonight as a little get-together,” she said.
Read the rest of the New York Times fashion article
Rozova AKA Anya Kop as she was called on the show is just so gorgeous and I have to admit she had what seemed like a great personality from what I saw on America’s Next Top Model.
hmm, I gotta wonder. 