Having previously been neither a dog nor a Valentino person, watching Vanity Fair's Matt Tyrnauer's achingly beautiful film Valentino: The Last Emperor has converted me to both.
The film, which follows Valentino Garavani and his partner Giancarlo Giametti in the two years leading up to the celebration of 45 years of his fashion house and his subsequent retirement, is an incredibly moving portrait of a man struggling to retain an element of control over an empire he built single-handedly, against the mounting influence of his financial backers, an increasingly prescient problem for design houses in a age where increasingly corporations with little knowledge or appreciation of fashion are the ones calling the shots.
I'm almost embarrassed to admit (almost, I am blogging it) that I actually welled up at the sight of one of his finished dresses after following the process of its creation. The film is released on DVD on September 6th and I would recommend it to everyone, even if you're not the type to cry at dresses. You don't have to like fashion to love this film, just human beings.
Apparently Valentino is embarrassed by his obsessive love for his entourage of pugs, and not only travels separately from them, but further splits them into smaller travelling groups, so that nobody will comment on a) the fact that he takes them everywhere and b) the fact that he has about fifty of them.
This is not a problem I will have; I only want one. To be named Valentino.
