tToday in Rome, the great and good of fashion and cinema gathered for the funeral of Italian fashion designer Valentino Garavani, who died on Monday at the age of 93. From Anna Wintour, Tom Ford and Donatella Versace, to Anne Hathaway, Natalia Vodianova, Olivia Palermo and Liz and Damian Hurley, guests dressed up to ensure the designer was sent off in a fitting atmosphere of impeccable elegance, for which he was famous (Damian Hurley added a red Valentino scarf in homage). As Hathaway wrote on Instagram this week: “He now rests forever surrounded by eternal beauty, a very fitting next chapter for the one true Emperor who gifted us all a legacy of incomparable magnificence.”
In fact, after a half-century career in fashion, “emperor” became something of a nickname for Valentino. American director Matt Tyrnauer's 2008 documentary, Valentino: the last emperorwhich shed light on his design process and lifestyle, he explained at the time that he “lives as luxuriously as his clients and sets a standard for the industry. He excludes everything that is not beautiful.” In addition to a 152-foot superyacht and a private jet (apparently used to deliver mozzarella cheese to one of his parties), Valentino had a portfolio of properties in London, New York, Rome, Tuscany, Gstaad and France.
“He was the last of an era,” explains renowned fashion journalist Suzy Menkes, who attended his funeral (last year Menkes co-wrote Valentino: a great Italian epic with Matt Tyrnauer). “He was a designer who loved being part of the story; he was very personally involved. Everything was about the client, and they felt like he was a friend too. That made him exceptional. That era is gone.”
Menkes has also been privy to Valentino's legendary hosting, where, of course, his couture clients also frequently attended: “They invited me to a celebration of their collection at their grand home in the French countryside. [near Paris]. I got invited to some pretty big places, but it was all out of this world. The house was huge and the garden was perfect too. I had the feeling that he caused as much trouble in his garden as in his clothes.” Beauty, Valentino once said, was his religion.
It was this passion for beauty that explains Valentino's enduring influence on fashion: he may have stopped designing for his eponymous fashion label in 2007 (having launched it in Rome in 1960), but the brand remains synonymous with “being camera-ready”, says Alistair O'Neill, fashion lecturer at Central Saint Martins.
“He met his life and business partner, Mr. Giammetti, in 1960 outside a café on Via Veneto in Rome, where Federico Fellini created The Sweet Life. That was the origin of the paparazzi, the idea that your every move should always be seen. Valentino clothes respond to that idea of impeccable presentation.”
Leveraging fashion to be camera-ready meant, in Valentino's eyes, avoiding passing trends, prints and aesthetic complications. Instead, it relied on timeless elegance, block colors and, of course, Valentino red, a mix, O'Neill says, of carmine and poppy red that flattered everyone. “I know what women want,” Valentino once said. “They want to be beautiful.”
Never missing from the red carpet, Valentino designs have been loved for decades by galaxies of celebrities, from Elizabeth Taylor, who wore Valentino couture to the premiere of Spartacusto Jackie O, who married Aristotle Onassis in a Valentino couture ivory lace skirt suit, to Princess Diana, to Gwyneth Paltrow and, suddenly, to American heiress Nicola Peltz, who wore not her mother-in-law Victoria Beckham's design for her 2022 wedding to Brooklyn Beckham, but a Valentino wedding dress with an epically large train and veil designed by her then-creative director Pierpaolo. Piccioli.
Born into a middle-class family in 1932 in Lombardy, Valentino's father was a businessman who sold electrical equipment, while his mother was cultured and supportive (she was named after the Italian actor Rudolph Valentino); His parents supported him financially at first. Valentino became interested in clothing from a very young age: “Since I was little, my passion was designing,” he once said; When she was still in elementary school, she helped her aunt Rosa and another local dressmaker with their creations.
At the age of 18, he trained in haute couture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Chambre Syndicale; After apprenticing under French couturiers Jean Dessès, Christian Dior and Guy Laroche, he founded his brand in Rome with Giametti in 1960. “The interesting thing is that he was an Italian couturier but he trained in France,” says O'Neill. “It's that particular blend that made it really special. It redefined what Roman haute couture represented; at that time, [the clientele] It was this curious mix of Italian aristocracy and American stars. “He combined his designs with Parisian codes of elegance.”
His long-standing relationship (both personal and business) with Giammetti was, O'Neill says, “a very important part of his success; they were life partners for most of their lives.” By taking care of the business side, Giammetti allowed Valentino to continue with the design side: “It brought peace of mind to Valentino.” O'Neill, who met Valentino several times in the run-up to the 2012 exhibition at Somerset House, Valentino: Master of Couture (which O'Neill co-curated), says that Valentino “was a very reserved man, and of very few words: he was very interested in the look of things. It was almost a philosophical commitment. Mr. Giammetti wanted to keep that very pure for himself.”
When Valentino retired in 2008, his design protégés Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, both Italian, were named co-creative directors of the brand, with Piccioli becoming sole creative director when Chiuri left for Dior in 2016: “You have to understand that Pierpaolo and Maria Grazia came about through Valentino,” O'Neill explains. “They were accessories designers before they got into haute couture.” That very Italian idea of family is, O'Neill adds, “very strong at Valentino.” It's a similar story in the haute couture atelier, he explains. “He 'ragazzi' [ie, the ‘girls’ – the highly experienced couture seamstresses]who are now in their sixties and seventies, have worked at Valentino their entire careers. That seamstress who made a particular dress design in 1978, say, could be the same person making one today.”
It all contributes to the clear brand vision we see on the red carpet today and Valentino's enduring fashion legacy. In 2010, Valentino told a fashion journalist: “I hope people say, 'Mr Valentino, you did something for fashion, didn't you?'” Yes, Mr. Valentino, we can probably say that.
