Women Wear 04 · The Wear

Valentino Garavani, in every colour but the famous one.

Valentino Garavani opened his house in Rome in 1960 and spent the next fifty years attached to a single colour.

Not a family of reds. One. A specific crimson, used on gowns that defined how an Italian house looked on a red carpet, and eventually named after him.

This is a woman who wears the house almost entirely in black.

That is not a rejection. Underneath the colour, Valentino was always a house of ornament — studs, buckles, sequins, hardware set in rows with the patience of somebody doing it by hand. The red carried all of it for decades.

Take the red away and the ornament is still there. It just has to work on its own.

The Woman

She is not in fashion. She is in a room where the clothes should not be the subject.

So she dresses in black and lets the metal do the talking — a brass V at the waist, pyramid studs round the edge of a bag, a buckle at the ankle.

Two things in this look are not black. One is a cream knit with sequins at the cuff. The other is a gold shoe.

She did not buy either by accident.

A cream crew neck. Plain body, three-quarter sleeve, ribbed hem. From the shoulders to the elbow it is the quietest garment in the look.

Then each sleeve opens into a wide flared cuff, and the cuff is banded in sequins — silver, then rose, then a deep burgundy, laid in stripes like a ribbon sewn on afterwards.

It is the only decorative colour she owns, and the house put it at the two points of the body she cannot hide and cannot stop moving.

Hands on a table. A glass lifted. The sequins arrive a half second after she does.

Worn alone it would be a sweet thing. Worn with black jersey and a lug-soled boot, it reads as the one indulgence of somebody otherwise strict.

Explore the Valentino Garavani Cream Sequin-Cuff Knit →

Black jersey, high waist, cropped above the ankle. No pocket, no seam detail, no print.

The house name is on the waistband in black thread on black fabric, which means it is visible to her and to nobody else.

Cropped is the decision that matters. It leaves two inches of bare ankle above the boot, which keeps a heavy lug sole from swallowing the leg, and it means the flat shoe reads as deliberate rather than as giving up.

With a bell sleeve on top, a narrow leg is not a preference. It is the only thing that holds the shape together.

Explore the Valentino Garavani Jersey Leggings →

Two centimetres of polished calfskin and a brass V.

There are no loops on a pair of leggings, so this goes over the knit, at the narrowest part of her waist, and its entire job is to stop a soft cream sweater from reading as loungewear.

It is reversible — black on one face, a warm tan on the other — so the same strap belongs to two wardrobes.

The buckle is the house logo at its plainest: an outlined V, no fill, antique brass rather than bright gold. At arm's length it is jewellery. At six feet it is a dark line across the body.

Explore the Valentino Garavani VLogo Leather Belt →

Black calfskin to just above the ankle. A squared toe. A thick rubber lug sole with a low block heel.

Round the ankle, a leather strap pulled through a brass buckle, with a round VLogo medallion set where the strap crosses.

The strap does nothing. The boot fastens with a zip on the inside.

That is the most Roman thing in this look — hardware placed because it is correct to look at, with the working part hidden where it will not interrupt the line.

The sole is the part that makes the whole outfit possible. Soft knit, narrow leg, a shoe with weight. Without that weight at the floor she is dressed; with it, she is going somewhere.

Explore the Valentino Garavani Leather Ankle Boots →

Laminated nappa in a pale, brushed gold — closer to old brass than to anything shiny. A square toe, a low-cut vamp, a VLogo laid flat where a bow would be.

Five millimetres of heel. There is no pretence that this shoe does anything for the leg.

Gold is the colour most easily got wrong, and it is got wrong by being bright. This one is matte enough to sit beside brass hardware without competing with it, which is why it works with the belt and the boot buckle rather than fighting them.

It is also the answer to the red. She skipped the colour the house is known for and took the one it uses on everything else.

Explore the Valentino Garavani Gold Ballet Flats →

A small black grained-leather tote, roughly eighteen centimetres across, with two top handles and a flip lock.

Pyramid studs in a pale platinum run the full border of the bag and the length of both handles — the Rockstud, introduced in 2010 and the most recognisable thing the house has made since the colour.

Studs on a handbag could be aggressive. These are not, because they are small, evenly spaced and set in a line, which turns a hard shape into something closer to a frame.

A chain comes off, so it is a top-handle bag at lunch and a cross-body at seven. One bag doing two days.

Explore the Valentino Garavani Rockstud Handbag →

The same grained black leather, the same platinum studs, in a flat card wallet about ten centimetres wide.

Six card slots, a zipped coin pocket, a snap.

Nobody will admire this. It lives inside the bag and comes out at a till for four seconds.

Which is the point. The way to tell whether somebody actually likes a house, rather than likes being seen in it, is to look at the thing they bought that nobody was ever going to notice.

Explore the Valentino Garavani Rockstud Wallet →

In Closing

Seven pieces. One house. Black, cream, and a gold that has been left dull on purpose.

Valentino Garavani stopped designing in 2008. What he left behind is usually described as a colour, and the colour is the easy half.

The harder half is the discipline underneath it — studs in a straight line, a buckle set where the eye wants one, a logo you can only read up close.

She took that half.

You can wear a famous house without wearing the famous part of it. It only requires knowing which part was actually the work.