A Valentino bag fit for day to evening – lunch at Le Cirque and nocturnal prowling in the motion picture of the Alessandro Michele woman’s life
“I see myself always as a director,” Alessandro Michele told me, after his latest Valentino show, “and I’m trying to keep in my mind the movie of this kind of crazy and beautiful and strange life of a woman.” Perhaps that movie was Jennie Livingston’s epochal 1990 documentary Paris is Burning, charting the Voguing ballrooms of 1980s Queer New York. The pronouncement of a ball room MC in one of its most famous scenes rings out true to this day: “It is a known fact that a woman do carry a evening bag at dinner time. There’s no getting around that … You have to carry something. No lady is sure at night.” Technically, this bag is what a trite trend forecaster may describe as “day to evening,” clutched by our Michele-directed Valentino woman as she shifts between, say, lunch at Le Cirque and nocturnal prowling in the motion picture of her life. Hence the juxtaposition of archival-inspired patchwork leather with a delicate gilt chain chomped in the jaws of a spring of Swarovski-studded black panther heads. Incidentally, that big cat is also a throwback – it first clawed its way across an evening dress designed by Valentino Garavani in 1967. Not so strange, nor crazy, but beautiful for sure.
The Valentino Panthea Medium Shoulder Bag in Ostrich and Nappa leather is available to buy now.
