Writer, architect, painter, designer and art director Patrick Kinmouth, set designer and art director Antonio Monfreda and reader in Fashion History and Theory at Central Saint Martins Alistair O'Neill are the curators behind Valentino: Master of Couture opening today at Somerset House. Synonymous with 'Valentino red', Roman couturier Valentino Garavani – and the handiwork of his atelier – is celebrated over a 50 year career, with the visitor taking the place of the model, walking along a sixty-metre runway to view the ‘audience’, all dressed in Valentino Couture. Grouped by themes rather than chronologically, the display culminates in recent dresses by the house, headed by Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri. We caught up with one third of the curating team, Alistair O'Neill to hear more.

Dazed Digital: Valentino has such a vast archive. How did you being to unravel that and decide which pieces you wanted to select?
Alistair O’Neill: Well, there’s three of us curating this, so I suppose we wanted to go against that widely accepted definition of what Valentino couture is, as an occasion dress, on a red carpet, worn by an actress. Tends to be column, tends to be a block colour. And when we went to see the full array of the archive at the atelier in Rome, just next door to the Spanish steps, we were bowled over by the complexity, nuances and themes – and we wanted to be able to show that. We respect the fact that a London audience for a fashion exhibition is quite sophisticated, so we really wanted to be able to show all facets of Valentino couture.

DD: Was there anything which shocked or surprised you?
Alistair O’Neill: I was really furious that a dress I’ve loved for years, and years, was actually ready-to-wear! I mean it looked so couture, in every photograph that I'd ever seen of it. So that was a disappointment. We wanted to be strictly, 'only couture'. I didn’t realise how much I'd love daywear, it’s a really important aspect of a couture woman’s wardrobe.

DD: Was there a particular moment, a collection that kind of stuck with you?
Alistair O’Neill: There’s so many. I mean, I mean the White collection really stands out for me. It was 1968. It's the moment in which America starts to wake up to Mr. Valentino in Rome, Diana Vreeland starts to write about him in Harper’s Bazaar, society ladies of New York start to wear it. He does a series of trunk shows that become really pivotal in that kind of a way. And Jacqueline Kennedy starts to wear it. She then decides to marry Aristotle Onassis and she wears this amazing daywear wedding dress, that’s so chic to see today. At that time he designs these really intricate organza, beautiful, embellished pieces of daywear; they’re quite short, and they’re also very chic. One of them Audrey Hepburn wore and the other one Marisa Berenson wore. She’s such a beautiful woman and it was just at that time when she starts to get into acting. There’s a Henry Clarke shooting, in American Vogue, and she’s wearing that dress in Cy Twombly’s palazzo in Rome and it’s totally black and white the story – and if you think about it, it’s at the height of the psychedelic phase. To be doing that and to have the assurance of being right, as well as wanting to make an established model and aspiring actress look like a countess is amazing. So for me that really stands out. What’s amazing about Mr. Valentino is that he’s been working for over 50 years – and is still working. He's just done costume designs for the New York City ballet. He retired officially in 2008, but he’s still very much working.

DD: How involved was Valentino in realising the exhibition?
Alistair O’Neill: I mean I have to say that we worked formally with Giancarlo Giammetti, Mr Valentino’s business partner since 1960. Everything was always. Fed back to Mr. Valentino, and then we would have comments that would come back. And that’s the way that they’ve always worked. Mr. Giammetti is the business side of the enterprise, and Mr. Valentino is the creative side. Mr. Giammetti tends to front a lot of business meetings and tends to be the kind of gatekeeper. It’s no different from those great creative partnerships in fashion such as Pierre Berg and Yves Saint Laurent. But as soon as we started installing, Mr. Valentino would arrive, making announced or unannounced visits to see how it was progressing. It’s thankfully, been a very happy process.

DD: Do you think that at a time when designers are being pushed to do more and more collections per season that couture will continue to be what it has been?
Alistair O’Neill: I think couture is a rarefied world, the man on the street, still aspires to 'designer' clothing and they don’t necessarily understand that distinction. Although Valentino’s couture business is in robust health, many of the small-scale industries that support couture are very fragile, more fragile than we think. For me this project is about trying to raise awareness of this and try to educate people about how important hand skills are. I mean you’ve only got to look at Chanel’s recent decision to buy Scottish cashmere company Barrie. It shows you they think that that’s in peril – it’s our country’s pride and we should be supporting that all the more. Chanel recently bought a number of ateliers so the feather work of Lemarie and the embroidery of Lesage can continue. They don’t just serve Chanel, they also serve couture houses like Valentino. So it’s really, really important that we understand a project like this isn’t just the chance to see beautiful dresses on display but it’s a way of trying to educate people about the workers in the atelier, who are actually upholding this. If those skills aren’t passed on, this is something that is going to die off.

Valentino: Master of Coutureruns from 29th November 2012–3rd March 2013 at Somerset House

“I try to make work that nobody can use if they are not willing to accept a change in whatever logic structure they are stuck in,” explains Lawrence Weiner. It is the day before the opening of his solo exhibition BE THAT AS IT MAY at the Lisson Gallery, and accompanied with a glass of whisky, he begins to unravel a five decade career in which he has deconstructed artistic practices and expanded the accepted notions of the art object. As the title of his new show suggests, Weiner proposes “are we going to accept this as art?” Something that has continued to fuel his fascination with materialism and breaking down the structure of things. THIS AS THAT (BE THAT AS IT MAY) is printed on the window of the gallery, projected inwards and outwards, allowing it to be viewed simultaneously without occupying the room itself. It becomes a material fact, less to do with the way the text is presented and more to do with its relation to space. Here, Lawrence Weiner discusses growing up in the Bronx, pretty girls at MoMa and his dedication to changing attitudes.

When did your fascination with language begin?

Im not even that fascinated by language. Language became the means to break the hierarchal standard. I got good at what I was doing. Language became a necessity because painting had reached a certain point. It just wasn't allowing me to go as deep into the relationship of what interested me - human beings and objects. Remember, at that time, it was not a radical choice. There were thirty or forty artists who began to see language as a means of making art. It wasn't radical. It wasn't even a departure. Nobody was paying attention to you apart from your little art world. It didn't much matter. You didn't have to fit in. The whole point of the work is that it puts a material fact out. It has no metaphor. I don't know how someone will react. It doesn't carry a hidden meaning. You don't miss the point, the point is there. Each individual person comes to art and looks at it. If it doesn't have a metaphor, they will take their needs and their desires and build a metaphor from what they are looking at. That is why Mondrian was so powerful.

You began your career with explosion events...

That was something else. It was 1960 and I was in California. I did a piece of work where I made a mistake, not that we got caught. We didn't even get prosecuted because there was a whole lot of people and I guess the judge at Mill Valley realised that if he held anybody, he would be stuck with all these people. I think we were sort of scary, but not frightening like Hells Angels. I thought that each individual explosion was a sculpture. I had to function and deal with it that way. Four years down the line I had my own crisis. I decided that I didn't want to participate in this world anymore. Looking back, it was a very post-adolescent mentality of not wanting to do something. From then onwards, it wasn't about each individual explosion. Each hole meant something to somebody and the idea became obvious, that each hole would always mean something to somebody. That was the point in making art, that it meant something to somebody. I guess I didn't stop producing this kind of work. Instead, I stopped thinking about the specific individual object. I began to realise that the drama of each individual work was the object. I guess it took me a while.

Growing up in the South Bronx, was there a concept of art?

Only by chance, yes. I had seen art but I didn't really understand it. They gave out free passes to public school kids for the Museum of Modern Art. It knocked my socks off. I made a joke, but it is not really a joke, it is the truth, that whenever you went to MoMa, there were always very pretty girls there. So, that was my introduction into so called 'art'. I guess I wasn't such a loud mouthed kid as I thought. An awful lot of people, and I don't know how they had the patience, were extremely kind to me. Seriously. I didn't have to fight my way through. As an artist it was another story. When it became obvious to me that I knew what I was going to try to do, I remember some very established artists telling me “Hey kid, everybody says your crazy, your not crazy, but how to fuck are you going to make a living?"

Did that excite you?

No, I had used up my excitement by that time. The gentile poverty of being an artist was far less daunting than trying to decide where I fit in positively in society. I come from a background of social engagement and civil rights long before it was fashionable, so I felt a bit of guilt for stepping aside and saying essentially instead of changing the temporal, I was literally trying to change the culture. It took a while and an awful lot of guilt. A lot of self searching to get to the point where I began to think it really was possible, by making art to change the logic structure of society.

There must have been a strong feeling of change since the release of your firstArtist Statement?

No, I was lucky because I had an audience from the very beginning. Mainly consisting of artists. It was small, perhaps it made noise, but it had no power. I never felt like I was one against the world, it just was a little hard. There were difficulties, but they were from my own choice. I had the opportunity to teach, but I wanted not to. When you teach, you take on an authority and you are responsible for people. Artists are not supposed to have authority. You are supposed to really and truly be the scribbler on the ground. Maybe it was a romantic choice. The making of art is about what you show, it is not about this persona that they are trying to build around you.

Do you feel your work is ever romantic?

Aspirational, yes. Of course, doesn't everybody? With every work that I show, if people accept the logic structure it would radically change their attitude towards life. I try to make work that nobody can use if they are not willing to accept a change in whatever logic structure they are stuck in. Art is supposed to change the way you relate to the world at large. Hey, thats not romantic, is it? But, I guess aspirational is not so bad.

Lawrence Weiner'sBE THAT AS IT MAYis held at London'sLisson Galleryuntil 12 January 2013