The Master of Couture

One of the last of the 20th century's great couturiers, Valentino has despatched his last runway collection and departed to add his signature elegance and panache to the halls of Fabulon.

Probably most remembered for his "Valentino Red" dresses, he nonethless designed frocks in myriad shades and styles - but always, always the height of sophistication. Needless to say, many of the world's most stylish women were his clients, including Princess Grace (Kelly), Vicomtesse Jacqueline de Ribes [who only recently departed at the very end of 2025 - read my tribute to her from 2011 here], Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Margaret, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, the Begum Aga Khan, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Anjelica Huston, Sharon Stone, Joan Collins and Princess Diana.

Indeed, he designed "that frock" worn by Antia Ekberg in La Dolce Vita, the wedding dress Jackie Kennedy wore to marry Aristotle Onassis in 1968, as well as Julia Roberts' 2001 Oscars frock.

Another great loss. There are fewer and fewer designers with a true sense of style around these days...

RIP, Valentino Garavani (11th May 1932 – 19th January 2026)

I dared

"Style doesn't have seasons."

"You have to want to dare being a model. You have to dare or you don't go that step further. You have to be willing to stretch - and to not only be willing to stretch, but to want to stretch."

"A lot of women say to me, 'Polly, why aren't there more clothes out there that we can wear?' And I don't agree with them! There are clothes out there that they can wear - it's just that they don't dare to wear them."

"I personally do not think that I have ever done, in my working life, anything vulgar. I know I've done provocative things."

"I like to take things further. Too often, stylists do things to please because they are going to be accepted. You lose the magic that way. You can’t give something special to your readers unless you dare. I was a stronger woman behind the camera than I was in real life. I dared."

And so, farewell, the remarkable stylist and fashion editor Polly Mellen, who has departed to zhoosh-up the glittering catwalks of Fabulon at the venerable age of 100.

Unsurprisingly, during her long career in the fashion world she knew everyone who was everyone - growing up in Connecticut, she was acquainted with the young Katherine Hepburn; a friend-of-a-friend Sally Kirkland (future editor of Vogue) recommended her to Diana Vreeland, who gave Miss Mellon her big break at Harpers Bizarre, and then Vogue; she worked with photographers Helmut Newton and Irving Penn, and her collaborations with Richard Avedon became iconic; she worked with just about every couturier from Cristóbal Balenciaga to Halston to Alistair McQueen, Calvin Klein, Isaac Mizrahi, Vera Wang and Viktor & Rolf, and nurtured the careers of a host of supermodels that included Penelope Tree, Patti Hansen, Lauren Hutton, Nastassja Kinski, Janice Dickinson, Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, and dozens more.

A most influential fashionista, indeed!

RIP, Polly Allen Mellen (18th June 1924 – 12th December 2024)

Aa-aa-Armani

Officially the most successful Italian designer ever (his fortune is estimated at five billion pounds!), Signor Giorgio Armani celebrates his 90th birthday today.

As famous for underpants, watches and accessories as for his sharp suits, his has been the style of choice for generations of stars of music, sport and the silver screen, politicians, dignitaries and even the Milanese police force.

Facts about Signor Armani:

• He was born in the northern Italian town of Piacenza, of Armenian and Italian descent.
• After military service as a young man, he became a window dresser at La Rinascente department store in Milan.
• Having worked on a freelance basis for myriad designers including Zegna, Cerruti and Loewe, the first pieces he designed under his own name were a series of leather bomber jackets in 1970.
• While building his fashion empire, he also designed costumes for more than one hundred films including American Gigolo and The Untouchables.
• When in 1975 he brought out a womenswear line using men's fabrics, he set the wheels in motion for the "power dressing" look that became synonymous with the 80s.
• Among his many commissions, he designed the costume worn by Spanish bullfighter Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez, the suits for the England football team (twice), and the cover of a book of gospels for the Pope.

So world-famous is Giorgio Armani, he's name-checked in loads of songs, from rap to pop to musical theatre. Not least, this one (a further tribute to another celebrant of a milestone birthday this week, Mr Neil Tennant):

Pet Shop Boys - Paninaro

Giorgio Armani (born 11th July 1934)

It's a Look

Paris Couture Week 2022 was a "happening". Again.

[from top left: Alexis Mabille, Filippo Fior, Gaultier, Iris Van Herpen, Julien Fournié, Schiaparelli, Yuima Nakazato, Gaultier again - click any pic to enlarge]

Aventurier et iconoclaste

And so, farewell to the last of the truly great fashion designers of the post-War era, M Pierre Cardin - departed for Fabulon, where he will no doubt improve the decor and attire.

Always ahead of his time, his creations were futuristic, daring and, ultimately, wildly popular - it was his collarless jackets that made the Beatles' image so instantly recognisable, and all the premier fashionistas of the day flocked to wear his clothes. He premiered couture for men, as well as off-the-peg fashion lines, and was the first of his ilk to use his name as a brand for non-fashion ranges such as sunglasses, watches and perfume.

• Read my previous tribute to the great man

Repose en Paix, Pierre Cardin (born Pietro Costante Cardin, 2nd July 1922 – 29th December 2020)

J'Adore Dior

Hils, Al and I sashayed our way to the fabulous Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) today for the latest blockbuster fashion exhibition - Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams.

Oh, my dears... the opulence! The style! The panache!

Will Gompertz, writing for the BBC agreed:

As you walk up to the imposing front door, your way is blocked by a black mannequin wearing the two-tone two-piece that defined both [his] inaugural 1947 show and Christian Dior.

The Bar Suit caused a sensation.

It was an extravagant, rebellious response to the grim austerity of post-war Europe. Instead of a dull boxy jacket and no-nonsense skirt that required minimal fabric or imagination to make, Dior presented a soft-shouldered, wasp-waisted silk jacket fanning out over the hips to reveal a long, dark blue pleated skirt, which took many metres of fabric to produce.

It was outrageously decadent in an era of rationing, but also fabulously exciting: a vision for the future that was colourful, opulent and beautiful... The fashionistas saw things differently. They absolutely loved what was immediately known as the New Look.

Christian Dior had arrived.

Why his work had such an immediate impact is obvious when you step over the threshold and into the first gallery. The designs he produced and the fabrics he used were the epitome of old-school glamour, with elegant lines - or silhouettes - cut from luxurious materials. They are a wonder to behold, at least on the outside.

I imagine the whalebone corsets and under-wired structures needed to retain the shape felt neither elegant nor luxurious. Still, Il faut souffrir pour être belle, as they say...

...There are galleries dedicated to historicism, the garden, the ateliers and, finally, a glitzy ballroom featuring animated glitter erupting across the ceiling and down the walls. The effect is only marginally compromised by non-slip rubber matting underfoot rather than a sprung wooden floor polished for dancing.

Christian Dior wasn't known for skimping on costs, and nor has the V&A.

With frocks designed by the great man himself, and by his successors Christian Dior, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri, hats by Stephen Jones, pieces worn by great style-setters of their day such as Margot Fonteyn, Princess Diana and Princess Margaret, and red-carpet numbers paraded by the likes of Jennifer Lawrence, Nicole Kidman, Lupita Nyong’o and Rihanna; everything from the most outlandish to the most timelessly classic and wearable designs in post-War couture history, all bound together with the history of the House of Dior and its founder, this was definitely one of the most impressive shows of its kind we have been to - and quite rightly it has sold out for most of its (recently extended) run.

Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams [if you can get a ticket] is on at the V&A until until Sunday 1st September 2019.

Beauty, what a weapon!

"Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress."

"Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions."

"A woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future."

"How many cares one loses when one decides not to be 'something' but to be 'someone'."

"Adornment, what a science! Beauty, what a weapon! Modesty, what elegance!"

"Fashion is made to become unfashionable."

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel (19th August 1883 – 10th January 1971)

Weekend glamour

To celebrate his 90th birthday year, a grand exhibition of the life and work of the fabulous Hubert De Givenchy has opened just across the water in Calais.





Featuring dresses he made for such icons as Audrey Hepburn, Jacqueline Kennedy and the Duchess of Windsor, the Hubert de Givenchy exhibition will run to 31st December at the Museum of Lace and Fashion in Calais.

The odour of silk, the feel of velvet, the crackle of a satin

“The allure, the odour of silk, the feel of velvet, the crackle of a satin – what intoxication!”

"The dress must follow the body of a woman, not the body following the shape of the dress."

“To have style is to have a feeling for what is currently fashionable, and still to simultaneously remain true to oneself.”

“Dressing a woman is to make her more beautiful - isn't that the point of it all?”

He was adored by the superstar "celebrities" of his day; the likes of Jackie Kennedy and Grace Kelly relied upon him to provide their classy public image, and Audrey Hepburn (for whom he designed that little black dress for Breakfast at Tiffany's) would not wear clothes by another designer. One of his mega-rich clients, a certain Bunny Mellon, even had him design her gardening clothes.

Revered as one of the greatest couturiers of modern times, he celebrates his 90th birthday today.

Many happy returns, Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy (born 21st February 1927)