Fashion designer picture

To fashion designer Valentino, all the world is truly a stage. So now "the Chic," as he is fondly called, is adding his sense of glamour to that other legendary Valentino, silent-screen sheik Rudolph, on a new stage: he's designing the costumes for Dominick Argento's opulent opera The Dream of Valentino. Set in the '20s, it opens this month at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. With his signature high style, Valentino was the dream choice to recapture and reinterpret the dazzle of the Hollywood Babylon in which the actor lived. "My clothing designs are not for shy people," Valentino says understatedly. "My only prerequisite for doing the opera was that the clothes be over the top." Way over. Picture ostrich plumes and harem pants, bejeweled capes draped over cascading lace, sexy headdresses and turbans, harlequin prints, and art-deco-inspired hues such as mint, silver, and fuchsia. The Sheik will be positively chic in formfitting waistcoats, tuxedos, and desert wear, much like the costumes he wore in his starring roles. "The people of this era did not dress like everybody else," says Valentino. "They wanted to strike a sensation with what they wore. And they lived as if they were onstage twenty-four hours a day. I love the era: there was none so glamorous as the 1920s."

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