It’s great to hear therefore, the team has launched a browser verison. At www.valentinogaravanimuseum.com, users can now explore the archives of the designer within their internet journey. There are still a couple of hoops to jump, such as downloading a plug-in, but the overall result is simpler, more appealing and should help up traffic.
At the original launch last year, Valentino Garavani’s business partner Giancarlo Giammetti spoke about keeping the virtual concept exciting by staying abreast of technological change. He also promised frequent content updates to the museum, including new drawings and videos.
That is finally happening with the web browser launch too. Two new videos have been added: one from Valentino’s collaboration with the New York City Ballet (as below), and the other of the recent presentation of his Commandeur de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, in Paris. Hopefully there’ll be more to follow.
The site also has a dedicated homepage (before the plug-in) featuring news, pics of the week and an ‘In the Press’ section – nice for SEO and further suggestive of more regular content updates.
Offline, Valentino’s couture archive specifically is the subject of a new exhibition at Somerset House in London, opening this Thursday, November 29.
Chloé is celebrating its 60th anniversary with an interactive digital archive to accompany its Chloé.Attitudes exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
The Alphabet, as it’s called, is an online exploration of the French fashion house’s heritage from 1952 to current day. Created by digital agency Guided Collective, it plays on the idea of founder Gaby Aghion’s own naming of her collections and garments, taking each letter of the alphabet and assigning it a relevant theme.
The first five letters were, unsurprisingly, C H L O and E. They launched simultaneously last week with a short film each (shown below) directed by Poppy De Villeneuve, Julie Verhoeven, Kathryn Ferguson, Stéphanie Di Giusto and Mary Clerté, who interpreted the themes of counter-couture, horses, light, O (roundness) and embroidery respectively.
The rest of the archive letters will be brought to life with further documentary films, previously unseen imagery, past advertising, sketches and collection references, editorial and even specially-commissioned music.
“Individually [they tell] a fragment of the story; collectively [they form] a mosaic of Chloé’s iconic moments, inspirations and heritage,” reads the write-up.
A new letter is currently launching every other day, revealed by a famous blogger worldwide before appearing on The Alphabet microsite. Once they are all live, users will be able to send friends an invitation featuring their own version of the heritage, relative to the letters that make up their name.
Referred to as playful, immersive, imaginative and compelling, the site is available in six languages worldwide and across multiple devices.
Elle Fanning as featured in Chanel's Little Black Jacket digital exhibition
Chanel has unveiled a digital rendition of its new Little Black Jacket photography exhibition, showcasing 113 pictures of celebrities and personalities taken by Karl Lagerfeld.
Thelittleblackjacket.chanel.com follows on from the brand’s book of the same name by Lagerfeld and Carine Roitfeld, available from autumn 2012, and the opening of its physical exhibition in Tokyo last week.
Included are shots of Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kirsten Dunst, Baptiste Giabiconi, Sarah Jessica Parker, Lily Donaldson, Stella Tennant, Yoko One, Elle Fanning (as pictured) and more. Each one is featured as though part of a rotating cylinder, random in its delivery and clickable to reveal full detail.
The 24-hour installation at the Palais d’Iéna, is a partnership between the brand, Milanese artist Francesco Vezzoli and Rem Koolhaas’ design group, AMO. No one, not even Prada’s agency Modecracy, knows what it’s actually about.
According to the write-up, the space will be divided into three sections – historic, contemporary and forgotten. Vezzoli is said to be creating a “non-existent museum” where he shows “his personal tribute to the eternal allure of femininity through interpretations of classical sculptures that make reference to contemporary divas”.
Any the wiser?
Building hype around the mysterious launch, is a Facebook app that invites users to upload and frame their own photo. The finished images are hosted in the museum’s digital gallery, and shareable via Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.
“Prada is seeking to create buzz around the pop-up museum event without revealing it. To do so, we have studied Francesco Vezzoli’s career and tried to link to it and to make it accessible to the worldwide web. In the last 48 hours, we have seen the number of people using the Facebook application exploding,” says Giuliano Federico of Moderacy.
As reported last month, it showcases five decades of the designer’s fashion history in an immersive 3-D experience; 300 dresses, 5000 images, 100 show videos, all in an equivalent real-world space of 10,000sq m.
Although officially retired from Valentino ‘the brand’, Valentino Garavani and his business partner Giancarlo Giammetti (pictured above) have been working on it for the past two years.
Speaking at a press conference in New York this morning (watch on YouTube), the duo explained that the aim was to showcase the work of a “life dedicated to beauty”, and make it accessible to as many people as possible.
It’s a particularly interesting move for a traditionally non tech-savvy brand (Giammetti joked at Valentino’s inability to even turn the television on).
“It all started with where to keep the enormous amount of things we’ve collected for nearly 50 years,” said Giammetti. “How to make it available to everyone that wants to see it; and how to make it exciting year after year without things becoming dusty or obsolete. Why not then use modern technology… where everyone can move with just a click.”
Albeit in essence a legacy space, Giammetti was quick to highlight that the work continues tomorrow; both in terms of keeping up with technological change, and providing fresh content.
Indeed to encourage return visitors, there will be frequent updates to the museum, be it additional rooms, new drawings and ideas – as suggested by Valentino – or video insights from the likes of Franca Sozzani, editor-in-chief of Italian Vogue who also spoke this morning.
Giammetti pointed out that the museum was funded by themselves and has no sponsors. For them, the numbers are irrelevant, he said. The app is free to download in anycase.
Nonetheless, it will be intriguing to see how it actually does. The McQueen exhibition at the Met was one of the Costume Institute’s most successful of all time; if you were interested in fashion – indeed even if you weren’t – it proved a must-see on the New York calendar this year. Could an online museum ever have the same pulling power?
But perhaps that’s irrelevant. What counts is that Valentino is advancing the fashion industry. While digital destinations to accompany exhibitions have been played with for a few years, virtual archive museums in their entirety are now likely to become increasingly commonplace.
Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway, who hosted the press conference, explained how Valentino and Giammetti together helped shape the industry in the 1960s. “Now, they’re repeating that inspiration,” she said, “setting the bar for other fashion brands around the world.”
I agree.
See below for a virtual tour of the museum, as well as a number of pictures from within it…
Valentino is set to launch a virtual museum that will showcase five decades of the designer’s fashion history in an immersive 3-D experience.
A downloadable desktop application connected to an online database, it captures over 300 dresses from the Valentino archive, organised by theme.
Users can explore different galleries and wings that would likely cover over 10,000sq m in an actual museum. There are also sketches, illustrations, advertising campaigns and red carpet as well as event photos accompanying each dress.
Photos and videos celebrate the special events and exhibitions from Valentino Garavani and his business partner Giancarlo Giammetti’s history, from the 1968 White Collection to the 2011 White Fairy Tale Love Ball. And there’s a media library cataloguing more than 5000 images including dresses, photos, drawings and 95 show videos.
A short video introduction has just launched (as below), while users are currently being invited to register their email addresses on the site to keep up with news on the December 5 launch.
The museum has been created by Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti, with support from Valentino SpA. It was designed and produced by Novacom Associes in Paris, in collaboration with Kinmonth-Monfreda Design Project in London.
But so too has the event drawn my attention to the microsite set up especially about the exhibition. At blog.metmuseum.org/alexandermcqueen users can find all manner of images, videos and commentary.
Included are snapshots of some of the items included in the show, as well as short films of some of the late designer’s catwalk presentations. There is also a full rundown of the different areas that can be seen throughout the museum.
The retrospective of McQueen’s extraordinary contributions to fashion is open to the public from May 4 – July 31, 2011. It celebrates his work from 1992 when he was at Central Saint Martins, through to his final collection shown after his death in February 2010.
Approximately 100 outfits are on display as well as some 70 accessories. They were drawn primarily from the McQueen Archive in London, with some pieces from Givenchy in Paris, as well as private collections.
For iPad users, there is also an app available, created by Vogue. It features never-before-seen videos, pictures, interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, including a personal tribute to McQueen from Vogue ed-in-chief, Anna Wintour.
From May 6, there will also be exclusive celebrity coverage from inside the gala made available on the app. Read more, here.
UPDATE: You can also see a video tour of the exhibition and an interview with curator Andrew Bolton, from New York Magazine, here.
