Valentino Garavani, one of the last grand couturiers of the 20th century who brought Parisian haute fashion to Rome and defined the style of the Dolce Vita jet set, has died at the age of 93.
The luxury house that bore his name confirmed his death on Monday, adding that the designer died “at his Roman residence surrounded by his loved ones”.
The Italian, who went only by his first name, worked at the head of his eponymous fashion empire for almost half a century. With it, he established a notion of beauty and elegance that helped define the modern fashion landscape and dressed celebrities including Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Marella Agnelli and Jacqueline Onassis.
Valentino’s vision was based on an understanding of dressing as a way to enhance a woman’s body in its most classical sense — to make it look and feel good. The designer, who excelled at tailoring, was acknowledged as a master in creating flattering dresses that women wanted to wear and could wear with ease year after year, as well as for his signature shade: “Valentino Red”.
“I know what women want. They want to be beautiful,” he once said.
Born in 1932 in Voghera, a small town in Italy’s Lombardia region, Valentino knew that he wanted to work in fashion from an early age. When he was 17, his parents agreed to his wishes. He was sent to Paris, where he attended the École des Beaux-Arts and the fashion school run by the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne.
In Paris, Valentino worked as an apprentice at the couture house of Jean Dessès, a Greek designer renowned for classically draped evening gowns worn by European royalty and film stars. After five years at Dessès, the designer joined Guy Laroche. The Parisian years would leave a deep impression on Valentino, as would the socialites patronising the salons of Dessès and Laroche.
In 1959, Valentino returned to Rome. With the financial support of his parents, he showcased the first collection under his own name in a salon on the prestigious Via Condotti. Italy was rebuilding itself after the second world war and Rome was at the centre of this renaissance, a bubbling hub of art, design, cinema and glitz.
It was the perfect background for Valentino, his Parisian training and grandiose proclivities. But because of the slim profit margins in the business of haute couture, he soon found himself faced with bankruptcy.
The answer to his financial woes appeared a year later: Giancarlo Giammetti. The architecture student met Valentino on a summer night in Café de Paris, a buzzy Roman meeting spot immortalised by Federico Fellini in La Dolce Vita.
“Meeting him was my greatest chance,” Valentino told The Sunday Times in 2007. It was the beginning of a long personal and professional partnership that would last until the end of the designer’s life. The two were business partners for more than 50 years, romantic partners from the day they met in 1960 until 1972, and worked together on multiple personal projects including the opening of PM23, a cultural space founded by the Fondazione Valentino Garavani e Giancarlo Giammetti last year.
With Giammetti in charge of finances and business, the duo relaunched the house in 1960. It soon took off, with Valentino dressing Elizabeth Taylor for the premiere of Spartacus, Jacqueline Kennedy in the year of mourning for her husband John F Kennedy (and for her wedding to Aristotle Onassis five years later), as well as Princess Margaret, Lee Radziwiłł and Babe Paley. At the same time, the label was making commercially savvy moves, including showcasing collections at Pitti in Florence, where American buyers flocked each season, and starting a ready-to-wear line in 1970.
Between 1970 and 1980, Valentino signed up to 70 licences, expanding his empire through fragrance, home furnishing and lingerie. Despite such an expansion, the label’s allure wasn’t diminished (or so he and Giammetti believed anyway).
“Valentino always had an eye on absolutely everything,” Giammetti told the FT in 2023, when the designer was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award at the Fashion Awards in London.
That meticulous attention to detail was captured in Valentino: The Last Emperor, a 2009 film that documents the last two years he worked as a designer. In one scene, Valentino quickly adjusts a model’s stole on her shoulder a second before she steps on the runway.
Over the decades, Valentino’s own impeccably dressed and coiffed figure, often surrounded by his five pugs, took hold in the public’s consciousness. He was part of the jet set, with homes in Gstaad, Capri, London, Rome and New York, a 17th-century château outside Paris, an 84-foot yacht and an art collection spanning Picasso to Basquiat. He partied with Andy Warhol and was painted by the American artist in 1974. A 2014 book called Valentino: At the Emperor’s Table celebrated his talent for hosting with tips on table setting, interior decor and recipes.
Valentino and Giammetti first sold their company in 1998 to Holding di Partecipazioni Industriali (HdP) for $300mn. Valentino remained in charge through another sale to Milan textiles group Marzotto in 2002. He formally retired from fashion when his company was taken over by private equity firm Permira in 2008.
“We left because the industry changed and meetings were all about money, not design. Sales forecasts decided what got created. The conglomerates made each label work to the same model,” Giammetti told the FT in 2023. “We couldn’t launch today.”
After a difficult two seasons under Alessandra Facchinetti, the brand found a new life under Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, who shepherded the brand into a chapter defined by modern romanticism and the smash-hit Rockstud shoe.
Valentino has been owned by Qatari investment fund Mayhoola since 2012. In 2023, it sold a 30 per cent stake to luxury conglomerate Kering for €1.7bn. The conglomerate has the option to buy the remaining 70 per cent in 2029 for an estimated price of €4bn. The current creative director is Alessandro Michele.
Valentino relished the public stage, continuing to attend fashion shows, red carpets and social events well into his 80s. In the last years of his life, however, and after suffering from ill health, he retreated from the limelight.
“I think I have succeeded because through all these decades I was always concerned about making beautiful clothes,” he remarked in Valentino. A Grand Italian Epic, published last year. “The grunge look, the messy look. I don’t care; I really don’t care. I cannot see women destroyed, not well combed or looking strange.
“And stupid make-up and dresses that make the body look ridiculous. I am not this kind of gentleman; I am not this kind of creator. I want to make a girl who, when she’s dressed and arrives in some place, people turn and say, ‘You look so sensational!’ This is always what I did, what I really wanted to achieve all the time.”
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