How do you mark the 50th anniversary of a legendary couturier like Valentino Garavani? With a retrospective of his life's work, of course. And where else would it be but in a world capital like London, where it will receive more lavish exposure than if it were in Rome and Milan in tandem. From tomorrow through March 3, 2013, the Embankment Galleries at London's Somerset House will spotlight Valentino's extraordinarily glamorous career through pictures, film and a selection of the designer's couture, two thirds of which has never been on public display. A design team from Kinmonth Monfreda built the exhibition, beginning with the first downstairs gallery, where the team installed a mirroring pair of glass display cabinets containing personal items from Valentino's Wideville, France, archives like couture invitations and photographs of the designer on holiday and at work. The upstairs gallery is a 200-foot catwalk. Visitors are invited to stroll its length and examine the 130 Valentino couture gowns, jackets, capes and cocktail dresses worn by white mannequins in various languorous and purpose-filled poses among the audience chairs. Three of the gowns are from the 2011 and 2012 collections, by the current house designer, Maria Grazie Chiuri. The exhibition finishes at the end of the catwalk in a second downstairs gallery. The ivory silk wedding dress belonging to Greece's Princess Marie-Chantal, and assembled and embellished by 25 seamstresses, is the first thing that clocks you in the face. Also on display in this room is Valentino's flouncy light pink organza cape. The showstopper is neither of these, but instead a small virtual museum holding a series of films by Antonio Monfreda and Giorgio Horn depicting "Le Ragazze di Valentino" (Valentino's Girls), cutting and assembling lace bodices and demonstrating couture techniques that Valentino himself learned at the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. Complementing the exhibition is a Valentino exhibition shop where visitors can load up on Valentino's limited-edition animal print totes (about $560), a range sunglasses from the designer's eyewear collection or even a memento of the exhibition itself via the exhibition book, "Valentino: Master of Couture, A Private View" (Rizzoli, about $35). 'Valentino: Master of Couture' is at Embankment Galleries, Somerset House, through March 2013. Go to somersethouse.org.uk.