Valentino Fall / Winter 2015

PARIS — The collection was a treatise on women as artists elevated to the highe...erm, uh, #ZOOLANDER2! Whatever designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli sought to communicate on the runway in strictly high fashion terms, the cut and movement of the garments, etc, was understandably overshadowed if not wholly consumed and consigned to the erudite analyses recorded Tim Blanks’s runway notebook by a textbook public relations coup starring two Hollywood actors reprising roles that have been dormant for nearly 15 years. The fireball that melted feeds across the interweb Wednesday was in fact the brilliant moment that followed the Valentino runway show staged underneath the tents at the Tuileries wherein actors Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson strode down either side of the bifurcated runway in character as male models Derek Zoolander and Hansel McDonald before posing for photos in front of a phalanx of runway photographers. And this Valentino audience ate it up in a way thought only possible of fanboys and girls would at Moschino shows of late. The smartphone photos and videos of the moment have been transmitted and retransmitted, liked, favorited, commented upon, duplicated, triplicated, and more stealing whatever thunder might have crackled over at the Grand Palais earlier in the morning. Oh, models also walked in this runway show including Grace Hartzel, Grace Simmons, Maja Salamon, Masia, and Yuan Bo Chao. Zoolander 2, who would have thought? And Valentino of all place