Wisely, Trynaur eschews overt Michael Moore-style exposition and lets his camera do the talking, balancing candid interviews with Valentino’s staff and inner circle with footage of the designer at work and play. This style does justice to Valentino, himself a subtle artist who made his most iconic statements through small, unexpected details: the amount of turn on a jacket collar, the balance of hues in his signature red. Like his subject’s, Tyranur’s genius lies in his attention to the little things, an approach that lets him tell his Big Story – the decline of couture – through the more intimate conflicts at play in the Valentino Empire. Under a lesser director’s lens, a clash between the elegant Italian and an hip young hair stylist (“what is wrong with a simple chignon??!” the designer whines) would have been comic relief. But Tyranur lingers on Valentino’s confusion and distress just long enough to register that what’s at stake in the face-off is greater than the designer’s pride. What’s wrong with the chignon is what’s wrong with Valentino, and the philosophy of elegant, classic glamour he helped create: it’s nothing new, and novelty is the oxygen in fashion’s ecosystem. For all his bitching against edgy stylists and profit-minded investors, Valentino understands he’s out of touch, an awareness the film captures with no small amount of pathos.
And yet to make Valentino’s downfall the story of an out-of-touch artist would be too simple for Tyrnaur, whose scope also considers the massive transformation of the apparel industry. Case in point: the marvelous scene between Valentino and Karl Lagerfeld, the head designer for powerhouse French label Chanel and one of the few personalities who, besides Valentino, still embodies the persona of the old-school, Old World couturier, complete with yachts, pug dogs, and an almost religious belief in feminine glamour. The parallels between Valentino and Lagerfeld are obvious. Both are the brilliant, aging heads of two of the world’s most influential fashion houses; between the two of them they have dressed everyone from Princess Diana to Madonna in their most iconic looks and set the tone for women’s style for the latter half of the 20th century. And both are jaw-droppingly ridiculous, Lagerfeld resembling an intergalactic Louis XIV and the 77-year-old Valentino spouting edicts about women so retrograde they’d make Queen Victoria pop her corset (“a women’s ankles when she is walking is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen,” he says in one scene). Imperious and pompous, perfumed and bejewelled, Valentino and Lagerfeld inhabit the musty stereotype of the European fashion dictator without a trace of irony or self-doubt – a sincerity that, to our own post-iconic, post-ironic palates, makes their authority all the more difficult to swallow.
Yet Valentino sinks while Lagerfeld soars - a contrast that speaks volumes about the changing world of fashion. Unlike his Italian counterpart, Lagerfeld understands that his couture concoctions are just window dressing for the real goods: the affordable sunglasses, scarves, fragrances and cosmetics that, by offering the middle classes a piece of the once-exclusive designer pie, keep the Chanel brand relevant and alive. While Lagerfeld’s Chanel adapts and grows, Valentino resists expanding his brand and, facing bankruptcy in 1998 is forced to sell his house to the Marzotto Group and work under its investors. One of them appears throughout the film but he’s completely forgettable and that’s the point – the people heading Valentino’s empire are not fashion personalities but anonymous entities who demand designs that sell and put profit above artistry.
Whether you see this as cause for celebration or, like Valentino, tears (and he does literally cry), is a matter of perspective. But whatever your take, it’s hard to dispute that the democratization of fashion is now irreversible; inseparable from the disappearance of “high culture” in general. Fashion houses, once devoted to the frothiest of fantasy goods, are under pressure to become mass-market brands with mid-priced accessory, fragrance, and eyewear lines to stay afloat in a sea of cheaply-made knock offs. In Valentino’s 1960s heyday, only the elite expected designer wares. Now you’re as likely to spot an Hermes scarf or a Vuitton bag on a manicurist as you are on a movie star. Yup, they may be knock-offs, but that’s beside the point: consumers now aspire to status and style regardless of income or social class. The irony of fashion’s success story is that it spurred so much competition, eventually forcing itself to cater to the middle classes it once scorned. When, about halfway through the documentary, Valentino rejects a set designer’s plans for his retrospective as “like Macy’s”, we wince not because he’s being a condescending ass (he is), but because he’s so clueless. Doesn’t he read People? The world’s highest-paid and highest-profile celebrities shop at Macy’s. Macy’s sells Valentino.
It is this refusal to slip into easy nostalgia that sets Valentino apart from other documentaries about aging legends. Viewers expecting High Fashion’s Greatest Hits will be disappointed: while Tyrnaur gives credit where it’s due – the footage of Valentino sketching, directing and editing his collection puts his talent beyond dispute – he never lets you worship him for long. The more we see of Valentino, both the brand and the man, the more the sparkle appears tarnished. Yes, the designer’s ethereal gowns look gorgeous on the runway models, but what about on the 60-something socialite squeezed into one two scenes later? Isn't it great that Valentino's couture gowns are hand-sewn by a team of talented seamstresses? It sure is...until you see how little credit they get.
Tyrnaur's most striking indictment of the designer’s relevance, however, comes from what we don’t see onscreen. While Valentino and Giancarlo, his charming partner of 45 years, swan Italian-ly about Rome and Venice with their scarves and cigarettes, bickering about the beauty of a hemline or the beauty of a stage set, the new garde of fashion - think Alexander Wang and Rodarte - is hard at work, wowing critics, scooping up endowments, and making sales through both their own pricey labels and partnerships with mass retailers such as Gap and Target. The most important designers now are young, hip and resolutely American (in vision if not nationality), and they have little to do with the kind of elegant exclusivity practiced by Valentino et al. They may be as snobby as Valentino, and their clothes may be as unwearable, but the aesthetic they trade in couldn’t be more different. The new face of fashion is less about beauty than it is about dissonance, edge; wit. As Tyrnaur takes us through Valentino’s Europe, all gilded surfaces and unabashed excess, we can’t help but think of how, well, unfashionable it seems. Valentino may be the master of beauty, but his brand of beauty is just out of style.
Which is the central irony that Valentino explores so well. The time when women took fashion pointers from 77-year-old Italian men with pug dogs has passed, and along with it, the mystery and impossible glamour they represent. Now, we aspire to look less like Audrey in Givenchy or Jackie in Valentino than like Lindsay Lohan in Mike & Chris or Beyonce in Joe’s Jeans - but, the film asks, are we really worse off? We follow these idols not because they are out of our reach, but because they are so touchable, so prone to screwing up, so (as the tabloids put it) - “just like us”. Valentino is an Emperor - yet our time belongs less to aristocrats, than the Hawaii-born President and his J. Crew-clad wife. It is fitting that the film’s final scene - the designer at his retirement party in Rome, watching his empire fall with a fireworks and ariel ballet tribute worthy of Versailles - is infused with a tone of relief. As a working designer, Valentino - a man who has a servant hold his umbrella and thinks women want only “to be beautiful” - is kind of embarrassing. But as history, as a symbol of fashion culture past, he’s a star among stars; a living legend. Valentino retires into fashion history willingly, but not without his rightful share of resentment. In order to be a living legend, you must first become irrelevant.
--- Alexandra Kimball
Valentino: The Last Emperor is now on DVD.
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