KENI VALENTI, once the best known and most succesful of the "downtown" designers to come out of New York's nineteen-eighties alternative fashion scene, has reinvented himself for the millenium.  Valenti has created a highly lucrative mini empire as New York's new "King of Vintage" with Keni Valenti Retro Couture.  Looking for something from one of Europe's more obsecure and now defunct fashion houses such as Pertegaz, Gallitzine or Carven?  Valenti has it!  How about a choice piece from an American sportswear legend like Clovis Ruffin, John Kloss or Gil Aimbez?  Valenti has it!  And of course there's acres of stuff from the so-called "heavyweights" -- Halston, Yves Saint Laurent, Geoffrey Beene, Bill Blass, Giorgio Sant'Angelo, Courreges, Alaia, Gucci, etc., etc. the list goes on and on, and so does that of Valenti's clients.  Designers from nearly every important American and European fashion house have visited Valenti's piss-elegant N.Y. showroom done in late-sixties black laquer and silver chrome, accented with jaw-dropping vintage (what else!) Knoll and Angelo Donghia furniture.  Fashion magazines from Los Angeles to Japan have showcased Valenti's shoes, bags and jewelry as well as his vintage clothes that run from the 1920's to the 1980's. 

ABOUT THE DESIGNER: Keni Valenti began his fashion career in the late seventies creating Hi-Tec and other accessories out of Saran Wrap boxes and styrofoam for sixties fashion legend Betsy Johnson.  The Italian ready- to-wear company Fiorucci liked the items enough to give the designer his own department in their 59^th street store in New York.  By the early eighties Valenti had opened a tiny closet of a shop, painted entirely in black in the East Village, where fashion editors stepped over junkies to get to his Japanese-made eyewear and amusing clothes inspired by, among other things, the Joy dish detergent bottle.  Japanese investors who saw a Time Magazine article hailing Valenti as "the next Halston" signed him to a five year liscensing deal that launched fifteen free-standing boutiques throughout Japan.  After a much needed break, Valenti returned with a small vintage stall at New York's 26^th street flea market, where designers like Jean-Paul Gaultier stood and gaped at his Pucci velvets and re-embroidered Diors.  Word-of-mouth in the fashion industry (and ever-growing inventory) caused Valenti to search out larger and larger spaces, which lead to the showroom he presides over today.  When asked about what lies ahead, the designer has an easy answer, "What else?  The Past."