Gale Parker's Clothespin opens in West Hollywood

On a champagne-soaked Thursday evening last week, Gale Parker’s Clothespin opened with cheerful laughs and a multi-generational crowd perusing her new store. The upscale West Hollywood locale on Melrose Avenue is Parker’s first store, but the New Yorker is far from being a novice in fashion. The designer once served as model/muse for the likes of Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent, as well as the design director for Ralph Lauren women’s collection.

Parker’s vibrant printed dresses, blouses and skirts looked like items girls would steal from their mother’s closets on a warm summer day. It’s easy to picture a wispy surfer girl walking down Abbot Kinney in a Gale Parker design, or a Malibu mom lounging by the playground in the loose comfort of Clothespin’s feminine wares.

“My mother and Teen Vogue’s blogger Jazzi McGilbert both came in here and wanted everything. Can you believe it?” said Noelle Valdivia, a member of the Clothespin team.

Paris Fashion Week: A fluttery mesh at Valentino

In a season when everyone is showing the kind of feminine frills and bows that Valentino made his signatures, it is too bad that the house's new designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli could not have produced a more compelling collection.

The focal point was the short dress done in boudoir pale shades of sheer organza folded and draped into overly frilly meringues, creating the effect of the dress wearing the woman, rather than the other way around. Gowns were also overwrought with too much sheer mesh, and too many bows and sequins.

Sparkly sheer lace pants and T-shirts, and a leather jacket covered in sculpted roses seemed to be on the right track, as far as making the brand relevant to a new generation. But even the limited edition shoes, customized by milliner Philip Treacy with stiff lace frills jutting out the back, couldn't disguise that this was a collection thin on ideas.

-- Booth Moore

Photos: Valentino's Spring-Summer 2010 runway

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Photo: Valentino's Spring-Summer 2010 show. Photo credit: Peter Stigter & Jonas Gustavsson / For The Times

Gaultier, Valentino, Font close couture shows in Paris

The winter 2010 haute couture shows are over ... so here's a final look -- at John Paul Gaultier, Valentino and Josep Font. Jenny Barchfield of the Associated Press reports:

"Jean Paul Gaultier [pictured at left] looked to vintage Hollywood for a solid collection that was equal parts Ava Gardner and Gaultier — the one-time enfant terrible of French fashion — himself.

"Things were looking up at Valentino. Its new design duo finally found their way out of the archive and forged a sexy new look for the mythic Italian label. Out went the ladylike day coats and tasteful A-line cocktail dresses in jewel-toned duchess silk; in came the second-skin bodice dresses in flesh-colored tulle and black lace; and up, way up, went the hemlines.

"For his fourth couture display, Spanish designer Josep Font continued to shore up his avant-garde credentials with a ravishing collection of think pieces."

Valentino receives Rodeo Drive Walk of Style award

Less than 12 hours after the Costume Council feted him at a dinner a few blocks away (and that following a screening of a documentary about him), legendary -- and recently retired -- fashion designer Valentino Garavani was back at the lectern, this time at the foot of Via Rodeo in Beverly Hills for the unveiling of a Rodeo Drive Walk of Style plaque in his honor.

The 13th person to receive the honor in the last six years (previous recipients were designers Giorgio Armani, Tom Ford, Salvatore Ferragamo, Gianni and Donatella Versace, James Galanos and Manolo Blahnik, photographers Herb Ritts and Mario Testino, and costume designers Edith Head, James Acheson and Milena Canonero), the gold-colored plaque bearing his name is expected to be installed in the sidewalk somewhere in the 300 block of North Rodeo Drive within the next month.

“I am completely drunk on compliments,” he told the crowd, after being introduced by actress Anne Hathaway. "Today this street is the most important fashion street in the world. It's an honor for me to have this plaque in this beautiful place. My mother always said I was walking in the clouds, now you can say people are walking on me."

In her introduction, Hathaway dressed in Valentino "from head to about the knees" (her words exactly), spoke of how she tended to get nervous every time she was about to meet the designer. "I wanted to be perfect in Valentino for Valentino," she said, noting that by the time she arrived at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for Wednesday night's screening of "Valentino: The Last Emperor" she thought she had it nailed.

"Last night I thought I’d really done it, I thought I was past all that, I was wearing one of his last, most beautiful dresses, a little black bowed number, I was gladly suffering through blistering 5-inch stilettos because they complemented the satin hemline. I was attempting to carry myself with all the elegance and sophistication of someone wearing Valentino, and I thought to myself: ‘At last, I’ve done it.’

"I was totally relaxed, totally at ease, totally confident. And then I went up to say hello to him. He hugged me, kissed me and then ... retied the bow on the front of my dress.

"Though I should have been mortified, I felt loved. Suddenly I wasn’t the girl trying to be perfect in Valentino … I was a Valentino creation.”

Wednesday night at the Montage Hotel, Valentino told the crowd he had enjoyed his visit but was ready to get back to Europe. This morning, after thanking the city of Beverly Hills and Hathaway he seemed to change his tune.

"Who knows, maybe I’ll be here one more day and win another prize," he said with a chuckle.

-- Adam Tschorn

Photos: Valentino's spring 2009 collection

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Photo: Designer Valentino Garavani and actress Anne Hathaway at the Rodeo Drive Walk of Style Awards. Credit: AP / Dan Steinberg

PFW: Valentino just like Mom used to wear

PARIS -- It's been a rough few seasons since Valentino retired. The latest designers to take the helm at the house are Maria Grazia Churi and Pier Paolo Piccioli, who came from the accessories side.

Unfortunately, their fall show didn't do much to bring the clothes in line with the covetable shoes and bags that have been embraced by the younger set.

In other words, this was your mother's Valentino.

They showed matronly looking shift dresses, albeit in lively shades of burgundy, jade green and warm yellow to go with the classic black and camel versions, fan-pleated over one hip or knotted at the waist. The same fox fur coat appeared in several iterations, including one covered in graduated crystal stones. Another coat came in ombre sheared mink. This was not recession chic.

And the long draped gowns, micropleated at the bodice and slit high up the leg, had none of the drama that characterized the red, red-carpet stunners of the house's namesake designer.

-- Booth Moore

Photo: Francois Mori / Associated Press

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