There are, in fact, 45 dresses from the Valentino archives that have never been seen before, alongside more obvious drawcards like Julia Roberts’ Oscar dress, Jackie’s iconic ensemble and Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece’s wedding dress, which took 25 people four months to make, with every minute obvious in the surreally extravagant result. Adjacent to the M-C opulence is a room screening videos that detail coach outlet online the techniques that created the clothes. There is also a “virtual museum” (available soon online), which includes more “how-to’s” for obsessives who care to duplicate the extraordinary handwork on display throughout the show. The “behind-the-scenes” element is Kinmonth and Monfreda’s acknowledgement of London, a rather moreloosey-goosey proposition than Rome, the city that hosted the last Valentino retro they designed. But it also offers an intimate human perspective on the grand legacy that Giancarlo Giammetti, the éminence grise of the Valentino story, coach factory outlet has worked so hard to guarantee. The designer himself seemed to be feeling the same thing. Asked what he wanted people to feel as they left the exhibition, his answer was a wistful, “We miss you.”

Steven Kolb was at breakfast this morning at the place he called “the best store in the city”: ABC Carpet and Home. As of now, the furniture and housewares landmark will offer a curated coach outlet selection of sustainable pieces by CFDA designers, including those who have won the annual CFDA/Lexus Eco-Fashion coach handbags outlet Challenge, which awards $25,000 prizes to selected designers whose businesses are at least 30 percent sustainable. “Fashion is about change, and these designers are at the forefront of this idea that eco-fashion doesn’t have to be branded independently,” Kolb said today, toasting the 2011 and 2012 winners: Marcia Patmos, John Bartlett, Johnson Hartig of Libertine, Pamela Love, Melissa Joy Manning, and Victoria Bartlett of VPL. Their collections coach outlet online were on display alongside those of Diane von Furstenberg, Donna Karan, and Loomstate’s Scott Mackinlay Hahn.

Sustainability tends to flow in and out of the fashion conversation—”People don’t realize that we manufacture in New York City with stones louis vuitton handbags that are sourced ethically, because it’s not really part of our branding,” Love said, “but I started my jewelry line in my house in Brooklyn because I didn’t realize there was any other way to do things”—but the CFDA is hoping to bring it to coach outlet online the fore. For that, Patmos said, “The shop is really great because it makes the whole thing tangible.” She was cheap coach bags so excited at winning the award, she added, that she’d wanted to jump up and down. “But I was at my desk when Steven called me with the news, so I had to contain myself.”