Valentino prez praises Ford

Whilst some have lauded his determination to return a sense of privacy and showmanship to fashion, others have been less favourable about his delayed gratification approach. (We love his designs, but frankly, we’re not sure we have the patience to wait to see clothes until they’re actually in season. We're impatient. That's why we work online.)

Now, the co-founder of a venerable fashion house has chimed in. Giancarlo Giammetti, co-founder of Valentino and the brand’s honorary president, told Interview magazine that Ford may have the right idea.

‘Today, in this confusion where the Internet reigns, we saw your collection not the day after, but three hours after it appeared on the catwalk,’ Giammetti said in a conversation with Valentino’s new designers, Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri. ‘Does the desire that fashion creates really last six months until the clothes are in stores? Does it last four months even? There is such a saturation of these things that I wonder if Tom Ford isn’t right not to do runway shows and to show his clothes in the magazines, because that’s what people want and where they remember them.’

Giammetti also took the label’s new designers to task for failing to respond more stridently to negative reviewers, for emulating Valentino too closely, and for diverging too much from Valentino’s vision. Fashion: full of differences of opinion, sometimes in the same people.