Valentino Garavani, the Roman couturier who launched his label in 1960 and found worldwide fame dressing European royals, American first ladies, and stars of the day, has died at his home in Rome. He was 93.
With his exacting pattern-making, signature hue of poppy red, and eye for feminine details like bows, ruffles, lace, and embroideries, Valentino was one of the key architects of late 20th-century glamour. Val’s Gals, as his coterie was often called, included Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, and Sophia Loren. Jackie Kennedy wore a white gown of Valentino’s creation for her wedding to Aristotle Onassis, and decades later, the designer interpreted a mint green gown he had made for the former first lady in 1967 for Jennifer Lopez’s appearance at the 2003 Oscars. In 2001, Julia Roberts accepted her Best Actress award for Erin Brokovich in a vintage black and white Valentino gown.
In 2009, the designer was the subject of the Matt Tyrnauer-directed documentary, Valentino: The Last Emperor, which followed the designer, his career-long business partner Giancarlo Giammetti, and his entourage in the two years leading up to his retirement. In the film, Valentino tells a reporter: “I know what women want, they want to be beautiful,” a 10-word summation of the aesthetic that had turned him into a multimillionaire.
In the years after his retirement in 2008, which was feted with a three-day extravaganza in Rome, Valentino hardly faded from public view. He could be found many seasons sitting in the front row of Paris’s Hotel de Rothschild, taking in the latest collection from creative directors Pierpaolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri, the latter of whom decamped for Christian Dior in 2016. Valentino was so moved by Piccioli’s haute couture collection for fall 2018 that he stood for an ovation, tears rolling down his tanned cheeks.
When he wasn’t cheering on the designers who inherited his label, Garavani could often be seen on Instagram, hosting glamorous parties at his French estate Wideville or on his yacht TM Blue One, rarely without his brood of pugs in tow.
Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani was born in Voghera, Italy, on May 11, 1932. He decided on design as his métier early on and enrolled at the Accademia dell’Arte in Milan where he studied fashion and French. Pursuing his ambition, at 17 Garavani moved to Paris to attend the École des Beaux Arts and the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. Post-studies, he assisted Jean Dessés, a Greek designer known for his pleated evening dresses, and Guy Laroche, a Frenchman with a sportier aesthetic.
After a year spent working alongside the noted beauty Princess Irene Galitzine, who popularised elegant evening pyjamas, Garavani set out on his own with the backing of his father and a family friend, establishing his maison, circa 1959, on Rome’s Via Condotti. “It was une maison de couture,” explained Giammetti—who met Garavani soon after—in an interview with Vanity Fair. “I say it in French because it was very much on the line of what he had seen in Paris… Everything was very grand already. Models flew from Paris for his first show. Italian fashion was very limited at the time. There were a few good designers, but just a few.”
