[IMG:L]Have you ever wondered why a confident celebrity, like Victoria Beckham, never seems to wear the same dress twice? That’s because she doesn’t.
“Someone like Victoria simply can’t wear the same dress twice,” explains couture fashion expert Keni Valenti.
“Victoria is so in the public that, if she did this, people would say: ‘Poor little Victoria, she can’t afford a new dress.'” So she does what many celebrities do, she rents her dresses from Keni Valenti‘s closet.
That’s, for example, what super model Caroline Trentini recently did at the Met’s infamous Superheroes Costume Gala.
[IMG:R]In that case, Trentini couldn’t risk offending any of the top fashion designers so she opted for the safest route. Trentini went vintage and wore a dress from Thierry Mugler‘s 1985 vampire collection, which–of course–she found in Valenti’s closet.
Keni Valenti operates a showroom in Midtown Manhattan that sells and rents vintage couture dresses to Hollywood divas and those willing to pay diva prices. His niche business serves celebs from Jennifer Lopez to Kate Moss to Diana Ross.
Valenti’s showroom is lit with several 1960s-era chandeliers and a series of oblong, space-age chairs that look as if they were bought wholesale from the set of Woody Allen’s Sleeper.
When I first arrived, Valenti was enraged about an outfit that just been returned to him by a certain unnamed fashionista A-lister. “She wore this dress on the cover of Vibe magazine and no one even washed it!” asserted Valenti.
He then turned the dress inside out and revealed several sweat marks. “I should sell it on eBay–someone would probably pay good money for it.”
After fuming about the mystery diva for a while longer, Valenti walked over and hit the PLAY button on his answering machine, to see who had called while he was out.
[IMG:L]There was a message from Diana Ross’ assistant–asking if Valenti could help her go back to her “old look”–and a message from a stylist who was dressing Kathleen Kennedy for a gala.
Valenti calls Ross’ stylist, chats for a while, and then heads off into his wardrobe room in search of something that Ross might wear.
As he walks through row after row of dresses he offers a running commentary on his collection: “I have dresses in the range from $1000 to $150,000, depending on what it is. I have Puccis, Guccis, and Ferruccis. I have everything. I collect them all over the world and resell them or rent them.”
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When I asked Valenti how, exactly, he acquired these dresses he explained that celebrities get the dresses for free, from the fashion designers; and then–over the years–he’d pick them up from the celebrities.
Then he qualified this explanation: “I don’t really get a lot of stuff from celebrities directly–and I am not allowed to explain how exactly I get them–but usually I get the dresses from their stylists and their maids and their butlers and their chauffeurs. Mostly from the maids, actually.”
[IMG:R]Illustrating, he furthered, “But I could not bring this to an auction and say this is Madonna’s dress.”
Valenti confided, “Basically, the maids will sell me the stuff. They will tell me: ‘I used to work for Eartha Kitt,’ or ‘I used to work for Susan Sarandon,’ or ‘I am the personal assistant for Bianca Jagger,’ and then they offer me these ‘hand-me-downs.’”
And, of course, Valenti usually doesn’t ask how exactly the garments were handed-down.
Valenti adds, “What I do is look for old clothing, I feel like Jacques Cousteau looking for buried treasure–looking for gowns all over the world, going to London, going to Paris, going to Milan, going to explore the depths of people’s closets. It is fantastic; that’s what I do.”
[IMG:L]Lately, Valenti’s business has been booming and, according to him, this is because contemporary fashion is dead. “Just think about the hemline,” he says.
“It has gone up and down. Everything has been done. The only thing that can be done is if the aliens come in and there is this thing [body] with three heads and 12 arms and 6 legs. And that is the only thing that would change the silhouette of fashion today.
Fashion is finished.
Fashion now is all about pulling from past eras–pulling from the ’30s or pulling from the ’40s or the ’70s. It is not about anything new. There is nothing new. It has all become vintage.
It is all become play on what has been done, because the world is at a standstill, it is the end of the world really–if you think about it.”
This was adapted from the new book, Fame Junkies. Read the hot, page-turning exposé that everyone in Hollywood is talking about! Purchase a copy of FAME JUNKIES for a discounted price on Buy.com right now. Fame Junkies is also available on paperback.
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[IMG:L]Fame Junkies – Volume 4: The Secret Lives of Stylists
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[IMG:L]Fame Junkies – Volume 6: Celebrity Stalkers, a Special Breed
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