Alvin Valley can probably soon add ‘by appointment to Queen Sofia’ to his label as the cognoscenti talk about his quality, writes Phillip D. Johnson

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY ALVIN VALLEY

OR HIS SPRING 2004 collection, designer Alvin Valley was inspired by the Dada movement and the way in which it freed him to express himself without restrictions in his designs. For his fall 2004 collection, shown last February in New York City, Mr Valley wanted to ‘inject into the clothes what I had learned from these artists.’ But this is just one small piece of the bigger picture concerning his growth as a designer. This season, Mr Valley was more directly influenced by his growing client list, their lifestyle and how they have become the ‘central character’ behind his designs. The theme was hunting and it was an appropriate starting-point for what turned out to be his most positively and critically acclaimed collection of his career.
   Over the years, Mr Valley have been able to build up a nice little group of socially connected fans which include Samantha Boardman, her sister Serena and their mother Pauline Pitt; Emilia Fanjul and her daughter Emilia Fanjul Pfeifler; Rena Sindl and her sister Serra Kirdar; Lourdes Fanjul, Marisa Noel Brown and many more fixtures on the New York–Palm Beach–Los Angeles–Newport, Rhode Island social set. They came for the spectacular fit of his signature pant and stayed for the sharply cut jackets and beautifully draped dresses and gowns. Along the way in this journey, Mr Valley has managed to get under their skin, heard first-hand about their lives and stories which have helped him to create designs in his mind based on the ‘beautiful pictures of their lives.’
   The definitive movement that steered this collection was when Mrs Fanjul ordered from him a tweed suit to take along on her yearly hunt with Queen Sofia of Spain. While he was curious as to why she chose him, it was very much like being nominated for an Oscar: it’s an honour just be nominated. A few weeks later, another client, Inès Rivero, ordered a few suits with the same purpose of doing her hunting up at her country home in Milbrook, New York. She told him why. ‘It’s the cut of your suits,’ she said. ‘They are perfect for that.’
   While he did do some research on the style, his inspiration jived quite nicely with his design æsthetic, mainly because the masculine cut in hunting gear was not that much of a stretch for Mr Valley, a designer who’s already ‘attracted to the masculine side of things when made for women.’

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Emilia Fanjul ordered from him a tweed suit to take along on her yearly hunt with Queen Sofia of Spain