Coming Soon: The Valentino Garavani Virtual Museum

Next month, Valentino will open his archives to the world. Using 3D technology, the Valentino Garavani Virtual Musuem — found at Valentino-Garavani-Archives.org — catalogs over 300 dresses from Garavani's five decade-long career, including Julia Roberts's Oscar dress and the couture dress Jackie Kennedy wore to wed Aristotle Onassis.

The site, which officially launches Dec. 5, will also feature over 5,000 images and 95 fashion show videos. Giancarlo Giammetti, Garavani's longtime business partner, explains of the site's content: “Animated galleries show a life’s work, and key dresses have been photographed in 360 degrees. Click on them and they revolve to show every line and stitch. Click again and discover the history of the dress, who wore it where and when, see it in the amazing campaigns that we created for the collections in the late 1960s, 1970s, '80s, '90s . . . move through to other spaces leading off the sunlit courtyards under the Roman sky to new galleries full of photographs of friends, models, drawings, animations, videos.”

Garavani adds of the project: “I see it as part of my legacy. I am happy that thousands of students, young designers and fashion people will be able to see and study my work in every aspect of it, and in a manner easy and accessible for the younger generations. But it is also important to remember things of the past, to review the fashion that has shaped our lives. I would call it ‘Future Memory.’”