dress 2012 fashion

At first I wonder if he might be hard of hearing because there is no relationship whatsoever between my questions and his answers. For example: "My dear, I have to tell you I am so happy that I stopped at the last moment. Because I thought that I did everything. After 45 years I did everything, I did all my collection that I wanted to do, and finally, when I stop, or fortunately, the world situation was not very good. Fashionhouses, they sell less, it is not good." The question had been: why do so many designers make clothes that make women look bizarre rather than beautiful?

Video: Valentino, the couture master. Link to this video

Valentino seems unfamiliar, I begin to realise, with the concept of an interview as an investigation of ideas. He sees it more as an audience, in which questions function as his cues to elaborate upon his brilliance – which he does enthusiastically, with an unself-conscious boastfulness seldom found in anyone over the age of four. And the funny thing is that his narcissism is every bit as charming as a toddler's – infectious, endearing and completely other-worldly. In Valentino's universe, beauty can never be problematic, let alone political, and aesthetic perfection is the only moral absolute. As it begins to dawn on him that a scruffy heretic who sees the world differently has somehow invaded his sofa, at first he seems politely puzzled, and then curious. Eventually, to our mutual surprise, a question detains his interest.

What does he think about the campaign to ban dangerously underweight models from the catwalk? "Yeaaah, you know, this was always a sort of conversation, and then the press they said stop to see those girls, they weigh nothing and they are like nothing in their own way. We tried – I didn't – but somebody tried to have more bigger model." He breaks off and pulls a face of withering disgust, like a child being forced to eat broccoli.

"It cannot work. You know why? Because when you show something for the first time and you want with your creation, with your mind, to create dresses. You have not to be obliged to do something because if you do something for a bigger body you cannot express yourself like you wish, because if you want to put a little more things in one side, or something different in the other side, if the body is not like," and he runs his hands down an invisible pole, "nothing, you can't do it. For this reason. When you show for the first time the girl must be like a dream, you can put everything – bows, ruffles, pouffes, everything! Everything. That is it. Yes, when girls go to see a show they like it because what they see, they see a dream on the runway – it's like a dream. And this is what I did create, for all my life. This is what I drank all my life. And what I can tell you, that I became quite a bit perfectionist. For my work, for the houses, for everything, you just want to see beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty. I am in this way."