Valentino. Testo di André Leon Talley
Milan: Franco Maria Ricci, 1982. 1st Edition. Folio, publisher's black silk cloth, spine and upper board gilt, pictorial label mounted to upper board, decorative endpapers, printed on handmade blue paper, original black cloth and printed black paperboard clamshell box.
Presentation copy limited edition monograph on Italian fashion icon Valentino, with text by influential fashion editor André Leon Talley, inscribed by him to artist, illustrator, and antiques dealer Vito Giallo. The late Talley, best known as the first Black creative director and longtime editor-at-large at US Vogue, was friend and close confidante to Valentino from early in his career (Valentino designed many of Talley’s trademark colorful caftans). Talley charts Valentino's evolution from 1954 to 1981, with a chapter devoted to his one-time muse Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Illustrated with dozens of color sketches and drawings by Valentino himself, as well as by fashion illustrators Joseph Eula, Anotonio Lopez, Fernando Botero, and others, and numerous mounted color photos by fashion photographers such as Francesco Scavullo, Deborah Turbeville, and others. With an introduction by Italian journalist Natalia Aspesi. This is the last volume in Italian art collector, bibliophile, graphic designer, and publisher Franco Maria Ricci’s Signs of Man series (1972-1982). Ricci next went on to publish FMR, his luxury avant-garde art magazine that Onassis considered "the most beautiful magazine in the world." Inscribed by Talley in gold ink to the title-page: "13 March 1983 / To Vito / Who has beauty around him / Best /André." Vito Giallo was a New York gallerist and an early studio assistant to Andy Warhol. After a falling out with the pop artist in the late 1950s, Giallo opened his first antiques shop, soon becoming dealer to "the who's who," including Mark Rothko, Greta Garbo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Elton John, and Talley, also a close friend. Text in Italian and English. Number 239 of 6000 copies. Additionally laid in is a typed postcard signed to Giallo from Talley, dated by hand in red marker December 14, 1983, with instructions on a recent order ("No more shawls for a long, long time..."). Traces of offsetting to gutter of a few leaves from adhesive plate mounts, occasionally affecting text and images. Slight dustiness to silk binding. Some edgewear to clamshell box. Overall, a very good or better copy, with an excellent New York fashion, art, and commerce presentation-association. Item #5573
$560.00