Mad about Style

Banana Republic has just started a partnership with Emmy-award winning tv show Mad Men to create an exclusive Style Guide of polished looks inspired by the TV series. You can also submit a photo of you showing off your best Mad Men inspired look and attitude to win a walk-on role in the show.

Browse the entries | The Banana Republic Style Guide |

Althea Crome for Coraline

Celebrating Valentino

VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR

Valentino The Last Emperor is a feature-length film on the legendary designer Valentino Garavani in the wake of his exit in 2008 from the company he founded in Rome more than 45 years ago. Shown around the world in film festivals to wide acclaim, the film that has captured the hearts and imaginations of audiences. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the world of fashion, featuring access never-before allowed in the high temples of Haute Couture. The legendary Valentino is the star of the film, along with his longtime business partner, Giancarlo Giammetti. Valentino The Last Emperor follows them for the final two years of their careers, and show the struggles the two men face as they confront the final act of a nearly 50-year career at the top of the world’s most glamorous and competitive game.

The struggle of art against commerce is at the center of the film. In the end, however, the story proves to be not one about money or expensive clothes, but about love. The movie is now playing in U.S. theaters. For more infos, the trailer and a list of the selected theaters: Official site | Facebook Group |

VALENTINO: A GRAND ITALIAN EPIC / TASCHEN

For almost half a century Valentino dominated Italian haute couture, dressing the world’s wealthiest and most glamorous women. Only a few years after opening his fashion house in Rome in 1959, Valentino could already count Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, and Audrey Hepburn among his devotees. Despite his retirement in 2007 little has changed; his brand continues to thrive and prosper, and is worn by celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez. Valentino has always designed magnificent gowns, never wavering from his signature style despite fads like grunge, deconstruction, and minimalism. This new Taschen lavish book traces Valentino’s illustrious career through copious images from his archives, including drawings, magazine editorial shoots, advertisements, portraits, and documentary photographs. Presented chronologically, the visual material is accompanied by a vast array of newspaper and magazine articles about Valentino throughout the years. Combined, they provide an in-depth look at the man, his lifestyle, and his genius.
Following the Collector’s and Art Editions, this trade edition puts Valentino’s haute couture glamour within reach at a ready-to-wear price point.

Chitolina, Armando (ED)
Tyrnauer, Matt / Menkes, Suzy / Miscellaneous
Hardcover, 25 x 33.4 cm (9.8 x 13.1 in.), 576 pages
$ 70.00 | ISBN: 978-3-8365-0329-7

Buy the book or flip through the pages at Taschen

COCO

Ad ottobre i suoi 87 anni proposti sulla televisione italiana in due puntate che vedevano come protagoniste la slovacca Barbora Bobulova nel ruolo della giovane Chanel, mentre a Shirley MacLaine e’ toccato il privilegio di interpretare la stilista nel suo periodo più maturo.

Ma l’evento più atteso è sicuramente COCO avant CHANEL che vede come protagonista la bellissima Audrey Tautou. La sceneggiatura, curata da Camille Fontaine, Anne Wiazemsky, dal premio Oscar Christopher Hampton e dalla regista Anne Fontaine, e’ tratta dal libro Chanel and her world di Edmonde Charles-Roux, la più importante biografia mai scritta sulla donna che ci ha salvate dai corsetti, ma che soprattutto è stata in grado di CREARSI! Per la realizzazione del film è stato chiesto a Karl Lagerfeld, in quanto direttore artistico della maison Chanel, di essere il consulente tecnico.

Foto: www.cinetv.com; www.filmofilia.com

Chris Cunningham for Gucci

Style icons: Chloe Sevigny

Time Warp: Women

Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (7 June 1757 – 30 March 1806), born Georgiana Spencer, was the first wife of William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire. One of the most influencial women of her time, Georgiana was a celebrated beauty and a socialite who gathered around her a large circle of literary and political figures and burnt the bridges in politics as an active campaigner in an age when women’s suffrage was over a century away and women had no rights at all, not even on their own personal lives. Georgiana, a close friend of Marie Antoinette queen of France, is one of Lady D-Diana Spencer Princess of Wales’ anchestors.

Left: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire in two portraits by Thomas Gainsborough, 1787 and Joshua Reynolds, c. 1780–1781. / Right: The Duchess of Devonshire as played by Keira Knightley in The Duchess, the 2008 film from director Saul Dibb and based on Amanda Foreman’s biography Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

Inspiration: Walking in Manhattan

A VISUAL COLLECTION OF DIANE KEATON’S MALE/FEMALE LOOKS IN WOODY ALLEN’S WORK

It has been pretty rainy and cold (oh, really?) in Seattle lately, I got a cold and I’ve just spent (thank you Netflix!) long afternoons on the couch watching classic movies. Like Annie Hall (4th time?) The Sleeper, Manhattan. No doubt that the neurotic Allen’s comedies brought some light into these grey days. Images: Screenshots from Annie Hall (Diane Keaton in Ralph Lauren) and Manhattan / Lindsey Lohan as Diane Keaton as Annie Hall for Premiere via StakeIsHigh

The new Ophelias

Often tragic heroins carried away by intense passions, the Pre raphaelite women embody mystery and distance. Sensual yet enigmatic and virginal they’re always reproduced immersed into untouched ethereal natural environments and from nature they find their strenght. Their big eyes and long hair caught in the sunlight make them look like dancing greek nymphs who belong to the earth more than the contemporary Victorian society. The “new Ophelias” embrace this mythical, legendary and dreamy world in a less decadent and antiquated and more contemporary way with flower prints and light dresses that ooze with tradition and authentic romance.

Images: Two looks by Comptoir des Cotonneirs / Sportmax s/s 2009/ Cacharel Liberty Collection/ Ice Iceberg s/s 2009/ J.W.Waterhouse, Windflowers, 1903 / Kristen Dunst in The Virgin Suicides, Sophia Coppola, 1999 from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides/ Goldfrapp, video for Eat Yourself from the album Seventh Tree, 2008

Smells like greed

From the Gagosian Gallery press release: The Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present GREED, A New Fragrance by Francesco Vezzoli, the artist’s latest work that replicates the strategy and aesthetics of a commercial perfume launch.

Just as Marcel Duchamp created Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette in 1921 using a Rigaud perfume bottle with an altered label, Francesco Vezzoli has created a signature perfume for the contemporary moment. Greed‘s label features Vezzoli in drag, photographed by Francesco Scavullo, where Duchamp appeared on his perfume bottle as Rrose Sélavy, photographed by Man Ray. The bottle of perfume is accompanied by a 60-second commercial for the perfume — directed by Roman Polanski and starring Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams — as well as a new series of needlework portraits of leading female figures in art history – including Tamara de Lempicka, Eva Hesse, Leonor Fini – as immortalized endorsements of Vezzoli’s fragrance.

Vezzoli has staged his ongoing preoccupation with the fundamental ambiguity of truth, the seductive powers of language, and the instability of the human persona in a series of works that explore the undisputed power of contemporary media culture. Recent productions include Non-Love Meetings (2004), a pilot show for a reality dating game that will never go to air, inspired by a documentary by Pier Paolo Pasolini and starring Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau and Marianne Faithful; Trailer for a remake of Gore Vidal’s Caligula (2005), a Hollywood movie that will never be made, starring Gore Vidal, Helen Mirren, and Courtney Love, among others; Democrazy (2007), a tele-campaign for two candidates who will never be elected, starring Sharon Stone and Bernard-Henri Lévy; and a single live staging of Luigi Pirandello’s Così è (se vi pare), the premiere of a play that will never run, starring Cate Blanchett and a host of top-billed New York stage actors.

Via Francesco Crispi 16
00187 Rome
Tel 39.06.4208.6498 Fax 39.06.4201.4765
Tue-Sat 10:30-7 & by appointment

February 6 – March 21, 2009