Valentino creative directors Pierpaolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri (Rich / Splash News)
When you visit the new Valentino boutique, opening later this month at 821 Madison Ave., feel free to make yourself at home. The label is setting up residence in its first-ever townhouse shop, where its coterie of ready-to-wear, accessories and couture will fill 5,295 square feet of retail space over four floors, including one reserved exclusively for VIPs.
Creative directors Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli collaborated with British architect David Chipperfield on the shop’s new design concept, also employed for recently opened boutiques in Beverly Hills, Milan and Paris. Finished with Venetian terrazzo framing, molded gypsum curtains and black-and-white windowpane flooring, the space is marked by comfort and intimacy.
The prized goods inside the boutique rise elegantly from the ground floor up: handbags on 1, daywear and shoes on 2, and evening looks (along with more shoes, of course) on 3.
The shop’s most distingué element is perhaps the fourth-floor VIP salon. Comprised of three lacquered rooms, it’s brightened by custom Via Bizzuno lighting and furnished with leather pieces that Chipperfield crafted exclusively for Valentino. Glossy wall varnishes and a faux fireplace will welcome the label’s most dedicated supporters on an appointment basis. The salon is a first for a US Valentino boutique and will offer services ranging from custom tailoring to special orders, along with glimpses at the label’s traveling couture collections.
The opening adds to the brand’s eternal buzz. After more than five decades on the international fashion scene, it’s still de rigueur to see a Valentino dress draped across an A-list actress on the red carpet, or on a European princess as she hits the social circuit. Earlier this year at the Met Ball, Anne Hathaway and Gwyneth Paltrow both slipped into Valentino; Jennifer Lawrence donned a dress from the revered house for a red carpet leading up to the Oscars, while Jennifer Aniston saved the famous Val red for the big night itself.
More boutiques in Aspen, Las Vegas and San Francisco are scheduled to open before the year ends, and plans for a grand Fifth Avenue flagship — opening in 2014 in the former Takashimaya building — are already under way. Until then, however, we envision label devotees staying quite cozy in Valentino’s newest home.
