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Slide Show: Springing into Tulsa
Valvo offers retrospective of season's collections
Valvo takes the runway during a standing ovation following Monday's Pink Ribbon fundraising fashion show at Southern Hills. Also in attendance was Amber Valletta, an actress and Tulsa native who was the show's honorary chairwoman. CORY YOUNG / Tulsa World
By JASON ASHLEY WRIGHT World Scene Writer
Published: 10/20/2009 2:21 AM
Last Modified: 10/21/2009 8:11 AM
It was his "Mary Tyler Moore" moment.
Remember the scene in the opening titles for that 1970s comedy? Where Mary stopped on a sidewalk in downtown Minneapolis and threw her hat in the air?
Well, New York designer Carmen Marc Valvo had a similar experience — minus the hat, anyway. An editor at Glamour magazine made the same comparison, too, he said. Last month, when his spring 2010 collection was broadcast on nearly a dozen screens in Times Square, he left a cocktail reception in the Nasdaq building and stepped outside.
"It was kind of humbling," he said recently by phone from an airport in Texas. "My name was like 50 stories tall in Times Square, and I started to laugh — I always wanted to be on Broadway."
Since 2003, Saks Fifth Avenue at Utica Square has brought Valvo and his fall collections to Tulsa for the annual Pink Ribbon fashion extravaganza, a fundraiser for Tulsa Project Woman. But during Monday's lunch and dinner events, we had the chance to see spring, as well — several springs, actually.
For "Fashion a Cure: 20 Years of Glamour," Valvo provided a retrospective of his label's past two decades, a first for the designer.
Besides, he said, "I wanted to show some spring things because you (in Tulsa) always see the fall collection."
Featuring models from Linda Layman Agency, this year's luxurious catwalk stalk took guests back to fall 1989 for the first five looks, including a gorgeous sparkling gold dress. A testament to Valvo's design
aesthetic, that sexy gold number, as well as any of the gowns shown, from '89 through the '90s and up to now, are classic enough to be pulled out of a wardrobe and worn today — and still turn heads, no less.
Such as the icy, sparkling hues from his "Water" collection in spring 1998. Or the bold red strapless gown from the spring 2004 "Flower" collection.
Those who never miss a Pink Ribbon show may have experienced a little deja vu when they spied a certain blush one-shoulder gown with a black-embroidered train from his "Belle Epoch" collection, fall 2005. Or the starlet-inspired "Hollywood" collection from the fall before that, for which the celluloid goddesses Rita Hayworth and Marlene Dietrich were Valvo's muses.
Before Hollywood, though, it was a trip from India (fall 1996) to Africa (fall 1998), then Ipanema (spring 2001) and all the way up to "Heaven's Gate" (fall 2003), from which came that beautiful long black, pleated gown that several women around us ogled, ooh-ing and ahh-ing.
The looks toward the show's finale were his newest offerings — the "Times Square" collection that will be in stores next spring.
"It's glamazon, the urban jungle," Valvo said. "Something kind of futuristic, high-tech, modern."
More than two dozen dazzling looks were sent down the runway, such as black, white and gold beaded cocktail skirts that caught the light and seemed to keep it before flashing it back at the audience. A black chain-embroidered cocktail dress was another stunner, as were gowns in shimmery, iridescent metallic hues. It was glitz personified. What recession?
Some of the models even wore hats. None, however, had a Mary Tyler Moore moment.
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Tulsa Project Woman
Tulsa Project Woman
provides breast health
education, no-cost mammography,
diagnostic
procedures and surgical
services for women who,
because of financial hardship,
may delay seeking
medical attention.
For more info, call 834-
7200 or visit tulsaworld.com/projectwoman.
CARMEN MARC VALVO
When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Evening Collections department at
Saks Fifth Avenue, Utica Square
Info: Saks, 744-0200
Jason Ashley Wright 581-8483
jason.wright@tulsaworld.com
By JASON ASHLEY WRIGHT World Scene Writer
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