After the final bow, Valentino takes his creations to the ballet

'RETIRED' designer Valentino puts a new spin on style with his work for the ballet.

Valentino ballet costumes

ONE by one, the ballerinas of New York City Ballet made their grand entrances in Bal de Couture, a new work by Peter Martins, and the crowd applauded in delight.

But the applause, this time, wasn't for the dancers. It was for the costumes.

You might have thought Fashion Week at Lincoln Centre was already over, but on the same plaza where models had strutted the runways just days earlier, it seemed like that had been a mere prelude to the NYCB's gala. The evening's star was legendary designer Valentino, and the focus was on clothes, onstage and off.

Designer gowns in the audience, of course, many of them in Valentino's signature red, but truly dramatic concoctions onstage: flouncy dresses in layers and layers of black and white tulle, revealing a surprise under-layer of bright red or pink, like red bloomers on a can-can girl.

Or a one-shoulder ballgown covered with rosettes, all in ruby red. Or sculpted, bubble-shaped tutus with tight bodices, in black, white and, of course, red.

Valentino, whose full name is Valentino Garavani, is now 80, a statesman of the fashion world. He retired nearly four years ago from the fashion house he founded in 1960.

In his prime, Valentino was the favourite of social butterflies and Hollywood stars, clothing Jackie Kennedy for her wedding to Aristotle Onassis in 1968 and Julia Roberts for the Oscars in 2001. In 2010, Queensland's Gallery of Modern Art staged Valentino, Retrospective: Past/Present/Future, attracting more than 200,000 visitors to mark his retirement.

But, he says, retirement wasn't ever going to be spent enjoying the views from his half-dozen homes around the world.

His desire to put pencil to paper and sketch artful things never diminished, he says, but churning out collection after collection did.

"I stopped because in the 'fashion world', I had done almost everything, and fashion was taking a direction I didn't like," Valentino says. "This is a new life for me, and it's been a very beautiful experience."

One of his most loyal celebrity fans, Sarah Jessica Parker, a board member of City Ballet, came up with the idea of a collaboration for the gala.

Collaborations between fashion and dance have a long history. Ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev hired Coco Chanel to design his costumes for the Ballets Russes in the 1920s. Closer to home, Akira Isogawa designed costumes for the Australian Ballet's Swan Lake last year and Toni Maticevski has worked with the contemporary dance company Balletlab.

It wasn't the first time NYCB has reached out to top designers; one recent gala was a French-themed evening featuring costumes by Gilles Mendel, of the J Mendel label. And last season's fundraiser featured Ocean's Kingdom, with music by one Paul McCartney. The costume designer? His designer daughter Stella, of course. But this year's production was the company's most sweeping ode to fashion yet.

For the gala, Valentino created 16 original designs for a ballet set to selections from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and for pieces set to music by Duke Ellington, Fred Astaire, Max Richter and Dinah Washington.

Valentino says he's a great fan of the ballet, and he has found working with the lovely music and eager dancers to be inspiring. It also helped that costumers were available to make everything perfect, just like it should be for what is essentially haute couture, he adds with a smile.

"I am doing this with great pleasure," he says.

For all his grandeur and fame, Valentino appears quite comfortable in a sparse ballet practice room scattered with a few instruments.

He says Martins, who is a friend, seems a little surprised at the minute level of detail that's required, and at the number of changes that were happening just days before the show. It's the first time Martins has seen choreography done around a dress and not vice versa, Valentino says with a smile.

Valentino designed costumes for the Vienna Ballet in 2009, and he would like to do a large-scale, ornate production, perhaps for the Bolshoi Ballet in Russia.

The evening ended with a sumptuous dinner on the promenade of the David H. Koch Theatre, where tables were decked with pink tablecloths and bright red flowers, with red sashes crisscrossing the room overhead.

But first came the true fashion show of the night, Martins's Bal de Couture, with those tulle-filled creations. Afterward, the crowd stood - but only when Valentino came out for his bows.

AP