New York Collections .. Red Valentino ..Fall 2013

To quote the 70’s disco diva Donna Summer “it's a nightmare, daymare, it's a badmare
no matter which way-mare!”

Just when you think that these two can’t deface the brand any more, they shock you with a collection like this.  I am not sure what this is supposed to be as I have been visually offended by what I saw.

The notes, as if anyone might care, reference the Brothers Grimm, and grim it is, and yet all that can be gleaned here is some sort of mangled references to folkloric costumes and perverse fairy tales.  What I saw is a collection of oddly proportioned clothes which might have doubled as the wardrobe for some burlesque stripper.  I can’t shake the feeling that the modes needed long over the elbow gloves and fans so that they might “willingly” remove these clothes item by item until tasseled pasties and sequin G-string were revealed!  And all of this made even worse by the poorly conceived styling of the show.

Red Valentino was to be the substitute collection for Miss V which many moons ago was produced by GFT and catered to those “younger” women who either could not afford the main collection or were considerably younger than the clientele of the main collection.  At this point, this collection serves as a way for the young or old who are void of any taste whatsoever to own a piece of a brand that really has nothing to do with the original DNA of Valentino.

I truly understand that when new designers arrive to the task of rebuilding or putting their stamp on a legendary brand, they want to mark their time with an imprimatur of some sort and as far as I can see, these two have certainly done that by producing successive collections of funeral, monastic, bland and otherwise costumey offerings which defy the bounds of unattractive let alone excitement.  How can it be that with an archive as rich as that of Valentino, there is not more to seize upon than this mess!  The 2 current designers seem to believe that grown women want to dress as virginal young girls or possibly Red Riding Hood!