The fabulous fashion world of Valentino was officially unveiled to the public this week with the opening of the spectacular Valentino Garavani Virtual Museum. The museum brings to life, in amazing 3-D, the history and work of the formidable fashion house that changed the way the world sees clothes.
The innovative concept of the virtual online museum disposes of old world methods of presentation and bricks and mortar technology, instead imposing a stunning and immersive three-dimensional environment for visitors.
The museum’s many archives span the 50 years of the Valentino fashion icon’s history and include more than 100 fashion shows, archived photographs, original designer sketches, a stunning collection of five thousand garments through the ages and a look back at the celebrities who helped bring the clothes range into the public domain.
“We are being called pioneers which is ironic considering our age,” said Giancarlo Giammetti, at the opening of the museum in New York. “We are bringing visitors a virtual fashion museum for the first time which exhibits people can interact with,” added Mr. Giammetti.
More than 5,000 documents have been provided online to form a stunning 3D Palazzo.
Visitors to the website at http://valentino-garavani-archives.org can download the unique desktop app and develop their own personal itinerary for the discovery of the museum from within the mind of Valentino himself.
The Valentino brand teamed up with Paris agency Novacom Associés who specialise in interactive marketing, plus prestigious designers Antonio Monfreda and Patrick Kinmonth who previously saw success in creating the Museo dell’Ara Pacis Valentino exhibition in Rome in 2007.
The innovative thinking behind the project was to open up the exploration into fashion for its followers the massive archives of Valentino which go back more than 50 years, with all sorts of cross-references and interconnections possible.
For example a fashion piece can be studied in intricate detail in the 3-d environment, which is a fantastic resource for fashion students alone. Top featured designs include the gown designed for Elizabeth Taylor in the film Spartacus and the stunning wedding dress that Jackie Kennedy donned for her marriage to Aristotle Onassis in 1968.
The virtual museum offers the history of Valentino (who retired in 2008 from the fashion house) to the new online generation in the language of social media. It also offers the designer himself a fashion afterlife, which he hopes will influence generations to come.
This non-profit project allows the fashion house’s extensive archives to be freely accessible globally to all, including historians and students of the industry.
It offers free access unlike recent bricks and mortar exhibitions such as “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty,” showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and many more at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for example, where customers are forced to pay up to enjoy art history.
Similarly, Gucci has recently opened the doors to another real life fashion museum in its home city of Florence, where the paying public can view the history of the prestigious Italian designer.
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