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Keyword

Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity

Start Date 14 February 2009
End Date 17 May 2009
Venue Museum of the City of New York
Location New York, USA
“Fit the century, forget the year.” Valentina

Valentina Sanina Schlee (1899-1989) – known professionally simply as Valentina — was a fashion pioneer, clothing such luminaries as Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Cornell, and Mrs. Randolph Hearst and helping to invent American couture in the process. Hers was the quintessential New York success story: she arrived in the city as a young immigrant and reinvented herself as the epitome of style and glamour, becoming a fixture in the fashion pages and a major celebrity in her own right. Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity is the first exhibition to trace the career of this legendary designer and features never-before-exhibited gowns, accessories, photographs, and printed matter from the collections of the Museum of the City of New York, the Valentina family, and other major collections, including the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum at FIT, and the Brooklyn Museum.