Valentino. The name behind some of the most gor­geous dresses on the red car­pet. You may not know who he is or the art he has cre­ated. Yes, art.

For the most part, the high price of cou­ture fash­ion gets an eye-roll and a “yea, like that dress is worth $30,000.” I don’t try to defend cou­ture prices. Why bother. I don’t think the pas­sion for fash­ion as an art can be taught. It is innate. It is a feel­ing you just have. Yes, fash­ion and the finer points of Haute Cou­ture can be rec­og­nized by those that believe clothes are just clothes as some­thing more than a frock you would pick up a Tar­get. But, the true lovers of cou­ture, fine tai­lor­ing and dress­mak­ing, feel it in our hearts.

Among all the glit­terati of celebrity design­ers, Valentino is King. To me, at least. For some rea­son, I have always tended to lean towards the Ital­ian design­ers, even before I knew how much I loved Italy. Armani, Ferré, Cav­alli, Fer­rag­amo, Dolce & Gab­bana. There seemed to be more of a pas­sion and life to the gar­ments. More of an appre­ci­a­tion for a woman’s bod­ies. Real bod­ies. Even though the mod­els on the run­way are stick thin, I would say that the Ital­ian designer are the most wear­able for the non-“model” type. The right lines, pro­por­tion, detail, color and style to com­pli­ment and accen­tu­ate your finest fea­tures. But, I digress. This is about Valentino.

Today, Valentino: The Last Emperor pre­mieres in Amer­ica. I am sure there will not be the long lines there were to see Sex and The City. It is only being shown in 3 or 4 states. If mine were one of them, I would be wait­ing in line on open­ing day. This doc­u­men­tary fol­lows Valentino through the last 2 years before his retire­ment in 2007 from his label.

Per­haps, he is best known for Valentino red. Not that cheesy 80’s power suit red. An opu­lent red that is rich, true and you never grow tired of look­ing at. In fact, I was lucky enough to view the Valentino exhibit at the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome.

It must have been Karma. I was through with work for the day and was just won­der­ing the streets when I saw a white build­ing and won­dered what museum it was. My heart leapt to my throat and I caught my breath. I had heard there was a Valentino exhibit to com­mem­o­rate his 50 years in fash­ion and his retire­ment, but I had thought it was a tem­po­rary, spe­cial exhibit. I was in heaven.

To truly appre­ci­ate this level of work­man­ship, you must see it up close. There are usu­ally Cou­ture exhibits of some sort at The Met and at F.I.T in New York.

I am anx­ious to see if this doc­u­men­tary is as enlight­en­ing as my other favorite doc­u­men­tary, Unzipped, a behind the scenes look at Isaac Mizrahi’s devel­op­ment of his Fall 1994 col­lec­tion. I have a feel­ing that Valentino’s world is far more luxe than Isaac’s. How can it be any­thing but, with pri­vate jets, his menagerie of pug’s cir­cling his slip­per clad feet  and his Rome Palazzo?

I don’t expect Mr. Valentino to be all sweet­ness and light. Fash­ion is a busi­ness, as well as an art. But mostly busi­ness. You are only as good as your last col­lec­tion. Fash­ion is a ruth­less world, where the artist lives and breathes the col­lec­tion so closely, and yet is told not to take it per­son­ally if the reviews rip it shreds.

For the most part, Cou­ture fash­ion is known for the ridicu­lous con­coc­tions that get strut­ted down the run­way and no human being would wear out­side of a royal Hal­loween Fancy Dress party. But Haute Cou­ture is is much more than that. The term is actu­ally french and means “high sewing” or “high dress­mak­ing.” These are made to order cloth­ing for a spe­cific cus­tomer, often requir­ing 4–6 fit­tings in the toile (muslin ver­sion of the gar­ment to test a pat­tern) and actual gar­ment. The gar­ments are made out of high-end fab­rics, detail­ing and are often painstak­ingly con­structed entirely by hand using a team of highly skilled dress­mak­ers. The designer, does not per­form the actual sewing, but they must know, under­stand and be able to com­mu­ni­cate the fit, feel­ing and tech­niques to be used. They must know how a fab­ric behaves when being sewn and on the body. All these ele­ments go into being called Haute Cou­ture. This is not just a label that should be tossed around, as it has been, to describe all run­way shows. Being able to use the title Haute Cou­ture is some­thing a designer must be a qual­i­fied for by the Cham­bre Syn­di­cale de la Haute Cou­ture. A reg­u­lat­ing body that sets the stan­dards. The Cham­bre Syn­di­cale is some­thing that France is very proud of and is very strict in its require­ments in order to main­tain the high level of design.

Alas, I think the quote I heard once is that only .5% of the pub­lic can afford true Haute Cou­ture. These houses gen­er­ally make their money from per­fume con­tracts, Ready-to-Wear or high end off-the-rack (Prêt-à-Porter), shoes, brand licenses, etc. But if you saw The Devil Wears Prada, you will know that the trickle down effect of what hap­pens at the élite lev­els effects what hap­pens for us com­mon folk.

With all that said, the one thing that always comes to mind when I think of Valentino, is a quote of his I read years ago when I was still young and thought I would be the next Valentino.

He sites his mother, who said, If left with 2 lira to your name, spend one on bread, to feed your body. Spend the other on flow­ers, to feed your soul.

I think that he prob­a­bly lives by those words, after all, as Valentino him­self says, I love beauty. It’s not my fault.