Valentino and Vasconcelos - Art and Garments in Dialogue
- Hilda Steinkamp
- Apr 14
- 6 min read
Valentino (93) is dead. Long live Valentino! The last Italian fashion emperor. His funeral was held in Rome on January 23, 2026, with a large turnout from the police, politicians, celebrities, and the general public.
And right back to life with a visually stunning collaborative project!
The VENUS exhibition opened at the Valentino Headquarters, Piazza Mignanelli, PM23, on January 18, 2026, the day before his death. What a dignified farewell!
Since May 2025, the Fondazione Valentino Garavani e Giancarlo Giammetti has been inviting a wide audience to its exhibition spaces for a small fee. Just a stone's throw from Rome's famous Piazza di Spagna with its much-visited Spanish Steps, PM23 is a unique crowd-puller.
Popularizing exquisite alta moda?
After the burial of the fashion icon? Far from it! I'm still just pressing my nose against the shop windows of Bottega Valentino, impressed by the displayed treasures and the commanding gaze of a stylish fashion retailer, and I'm content with what's at the gates.
Art and Clothes
Originally conceived by Valentino himself and his long-time business partner and former life partner Giancarlo Giammetti, the VENUS exhibition bears the creative signature of the Portuguese artist Joanna Vasconcelos , who juxtaposes her sculptural designs with Valentino's fashion art.
The title is bestowed by Venus, the Roman goddess of beauty and love.
But this exhibition is far more than a tribute to the glittering haute couture gowns from the Roman designer's archives. Valentino transformed women—regardless of age, preferably famous and wealthy—into icons of beauty and elegance. True to his mantra: "I love beauty. I can't help it."
VENUS, from Joanna Vasconcelos' perspective, is not a glorification of female beauty. The artist takes up classical elements of the Roman icon and reinterprets them. She presents woman as a role model and beauty ideal in a way that is both critical and humorous, and always surprisingly different. Above all, it is contemporary. This is how stories are told.
"I'll be your mirror"
Even in Piazza Mignanelli, a monumental sculpture by the artist attracts both women and men, inviting them to contemplate it: to see themselves from shifting perspectives and to experience a fractured reality reflected in the mirror. The faces of curious, self-absorbed, and contemplative viewers are mirrored dozens of times. After the news of Valentino's death in January 2026, bouquets of flowers sent silent tributes (in the last image).
From a bird's-eye view, the mirrored sculpture resembles a mask. It both conceals the viewer and sharpens the viewer's perception.
Bond Girl and Lilaea
With a focused gaze, I enter the hallowed halls of the Valentino-Vasconcelos exhibition. I am greeted by two statues from Vasconcelos' cement series. Classic female seductresses, now in updated, no less alluring crocheted skins and bathed in the glow of the light installation:
Here, as throughout the Palazzo, the names of the rooms create a successful tension between physical and intellectual beauty. The Fondazione building once housed the wealthy Mignanelli family clan; in the 19th century, it was a church-run school offering classical subjects, from metaphysics and liturgy to mathematics, music, medicine, and grammar. Valentino's charming bustiers and tailored jackets in the doorways of former studies ignite the imagination. In the 21st century—as I understand and know—beauty is a complementary construct of body and intellect. And that applies not only to women!
Valkyrie Venus
In the central exhibition space, a monumental art installation guides me past mannequins in Valentino's haute couture creations from 1966 to 2007.
Fourteen meters of crocheted craftsmanship, adorned with inflatable balloons and decorated with fabrics, metals, feathers, beads, and fairy lights, is the artist's tribute to Valentino's creative universe. She calls her creation "Valkyrie Venus." With enormous tentacles, her Valkyrie entwines ten models from Valentino's fashion designs, bestowing upon them—like her predecessor from Norse mythology—the status of chosen creatures.
High craftsmanship
Valentino's dresses are distinguished by the same handcrafted quality as Vasconcelos' sculptures. All of them are handmade. Valentino is known for foregoing sewing machines and other technological aids. Joanna Vasconcelos, with her crocheted creations made from natural materials, emphasizes the genealogy of a handcrafted art from her great-grandmother's time, an art that survived the industrial production of textiles in the post-war years, mostly from synthetic materials, and has remained an element of high fashion culture.
Hundreds of hours of work went into crafting this monumental work by hand, both in Rome and in Vasconcelos' Lisbon studio.
Gigantic shoe sculptures
Alongside elegant silver-grey evening gowns from Valentino's 1990s archive, the collection evokes the glamorous era of Marilyn Monroe or the social fantasies of Cinderella stories throughout history. Silk, satin, organza, and taffeta combine with sequins to create a stylishly sexy envelope for the feminine form.
Vasconcelos creates an erotic symbol of high heels from household items. More than 300 stainless steel pots are stacked to form the XXL footwear.
The material and the exaggeration convey a recognition of the traditionally often underestimated drudgery of women in the household. At the same time, the increased self-confidence of the emancipated woman dominates, who consciously stages her femininity without allowing herself to be reduced to a man's beautiful accessory in his home.
Dysfunctional industrial products
Vasconcelos transforms them into works of art. She assembles 76 Bosch irons into a lotus blossom. Stripped of their utilitarian function, these appliances no longer iron or smooth textiles. Nor do they bend or force women into the role of housewives.
In Valentino's evening gown (2001), the woman blossoms into a figure that is both feminine and resistant, showcasing her beauty without placing herself in domestic service.
Variations of Love
Love, a blend of longing and desire, finds its sculptural expression in Joana Vasconcelos's work, for example in Red Independent Heart, a rotating heart-shaped ensemble made of 4000 pieces of plastic cutlery, bent and complemented by metallic components, accompanied by yearning Faro melodies from the sound installation and a flattering fabric creation in Valentino red:
Valentino's signature color since 1959 has been red—along with white for wedding dresses. He chose an archetypal color from human history, initially used for painting, then for dyeing fabrics. Life, love, passion—Valentino red draws women out of their traditional hiding place behind soft colors, giving them a vibrant presence and a regal radiance. And a touch of defiant aggression.
Joana Vasconcelos presents darker facets of love in Witch Mirror as a counterpoint at the other end of the exhibition corridor:
Red and black tentacles and thorns from Vasconcelos' artistic repertoire seem to reach out for the figure in the black Valentino gown. Cascades of black fabric beneath the strapless bustier dominate narrow stripes of red lining on the back. In the reflection, the figure sees only pure black, not the remnants of its hidden vitality.
Street brothel in a luxury van
Love as a business. Female prostitution is also a topic that Joana Vasconcelos does not shy away from addressing artistically.
The sleeping area of a van becomes the workplace for women working the streets . A soundproof, luxurious white leather interior initially makes the amorous encounter seem comfortable. But the lyrics and melody of Sinatra's alienating song "Strangers in the Night" intrude on this intimate meeting place. The flickering lights likely belong to the cars of clients who stroll along the roadside at night, trying to engage sex workers in business. Valentino's short cocktail dress leaves no doubt about the seductive allure of femininity. Together, sculpture, installation, and couture reveal just how vulnerable female charms are when offered up for fleeting encounters.
In the Garden of Eden
All the archetypal female figures of the exhibition are gathered here: Valkyrie heroine, prostitute, Cinderella, femme fatale, and seductress. The snake is also present, in an artful embellishment by Vasconcelos.
Nevertheless, this Eden is not an idealized paradise. Rather, it's a place of transition where women can consciously and independently discover their future roles. Fluorescent flickering lights continuously bathe the space in light and shadow, concealing and revealing the aesthetic nakedness of the figures in Valentino's alluring lace gowns. Generating this symbiosis of sensuality and self-awareness as a woman is no easy process.
Bridge between art, fashion and community
More than 200 people in Rome and Lisbon participated in the collaborative project VENUS. In workshops alone, 200 kg of crocheted forms were created in 750 hours. Students of belle arti (fine arts) and fashion design helped with the exhibition concept, while children from hospitals and hospices with their families, and women from women's shelters and prisons, contributed to the craftwork.
The Fondazione Valentino Garvani e Giancarlo Giammetti fosters creative talent as well as craftsmanship and supports people in precarious circumstances. Through participation, it opens the world of the fashion elite to the urban public in Rome.
VALENTINO
Responsible entrepreneurship
with a sense of
social participation
Valentino Garavani through the eyes of
Joana Vasconcelos
Exhibition in
Rome, Piazza Mignanelli 23, PM 23
18.01. - 31.05.2026
Comments