The fashion designer, who throughout the world was simply Valentino, died this Monday in Rome at the age of 93 “surrounded by his loved ones.” Valentino, one of those few people who can be called only by their first name, and even one of the least who can be associated with a color, red, was the other great king of Italian fashion in the world, with Giorgio Armani, who died last year.
The designer’s wake will be located in the PM23 cultural space, in the center of Rome, next to Piazza Spagna, created by Valentino himself and his partner and partner for many years, Giancarlo Giammetti. The funeral chapel will be open on Wednesday the 21st, until Thursday, the 22nd, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Then, on Friday the 23rd, the funeral will take place at 11:00 in the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels and Martyrs, in Rome.
One of the first reactions has been that of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, who has summed up the feeling of the entire country: “Valentino, the undisputed master of style and elegance, and the eternal symbol of Italian haute couture. Today, Italy loses a legend, but his legacy will continue to inspire generations. Thank you for everything.”
The famous stylist, who sold his brand in 1998, although he maintained his positions, and retired permanently in 2007, chose red as the color of his life when he was a child in Barcelona. It happened one night when he went to the opera and was fascinated to see himself surrounded by elegant women dressed in red. Born in Voghera, a town between Milan and Genoa, in 1932, Valentino Ludovico Clemente Garavani simply chose Valentino to name the brand he founded in 1959 in Rome.
He trained in Paris, where he moved when he was only 17 years old, in 1949, with a clear vocation for fashion, and thanks to the support of his mother, who always believed in him, she paid for his trip and to whom the designer was always very close. She attended the École des Beaux-Arts de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisien and then learned the trade in the sewing workshops of Jean Dèsses and Guy Laroche. Returning to Italy, he soon rose to fame in 1962 with his first fashion show at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, which was a unanimous triumph. Thus began a career that has been a dazzling international success.
In 1960, on a terrace on Via Veneto, he had the meeting that marked his life and career, with Giancarlo Giammetti. They became partners, Valentino put creativity and he put business vision in the background. They began a relationship that romantically lasted 12 years, and that they only made public for the first time many years later, in 2004, but that professionally has lasted until today as a deep friendship, portrayed in the documentary Valentino: the last emperor (2008). They met at the right time in the right place, they got on the fabulous train of sweet lifewhen Italy became fashionable and fascinated Americans.
In those years Elizabeth Taylor was in Rome filming Cleopatra and they became friends. She began wearing her designs and the brand was immediately known in the United States. By the middle of the decade they were already dressing the most important women in New York and Los Angeles, Giammati recalled in an interview: “Diana Vreeland, director of Voguehe took a liking to us and called us The BoysSoon New York began to be like their home – they became regulars at Andy Warhol’s parties – and also Paris, where they opened a headquarters in Place Vendome.
In 1968 he already reduced his brand to its essence with the famous “V”, the brand’s logo, because in the sixties Valentino became a myth. Among other things because the myths of social life and Hollywood approached him, and since then he has designed models for queens and princesses. To get an idea of the extent to which it symbolized luxury and elegance, just remember that Farah Diba wore one of his suits the day he left Iran for exile after the Islamist revolution. Valentino dressed Jacqueline Kennedy both at John Kennedy’s funeral and at her subsequent wedding to Aristoteles Onassis, and then all the great divas of cinema, from Sophia Loren to Julia Roberts. Up to eight actresses have received the Oscar wearing her dress, one of their records.
It was what he had always dreamed of, an almost unreal world dominated by beauty and that seemed like his natural destiny. He said that as a child he pretended to sleep and dreamed of Judy Garland and Hedi Lamarr, floating among the stars of Hollywood. “I miss the time when there were no limits to opulence and elegance. Maybe I left in time, because I could no longer do what I did,” he said after his retirement.
In the end he himself, in his own fable-like opulence and princely life, was a character worthy of what he dreamed of as a child. He even appeared in the movie The devil wears Pradawhere he makes a cameo playing himself as if he were the god of fashion who descended to earth, and something like that was in that world, always something distant and unattainable, in another category. I was aware, and I played with that character from an exclusive planet that barely touched the earth. In an interview at Corriere della Sera In 2017, the journalist asked him if he always traveled by private plane, because she couldn’t imagine it on a scheduled flight. “You can’t imagine it, actually,” he replied.
Eccentric and sophisticated, permanently tanned and coiffed, in love with his dogs, a pack of short-tempered little pugs, he was also famous for his lavish parties, some of them at his castle near Paris. “Making clothes was the best option for me, because I am terrible at everything else,” he once confessed.
Red, his red, a kind of mixture of cadmium, purple and carmine, was the discovery that became his signature, although in an interview he did not even remember how he found it. “It was a long research process mixing many tones… I don’t remember, but I wanted to have a slightly orange red. In the end I got it.” Regarding his obsession with red, he explained that for him it was the perfect color to sublimate the beauty of a woman: “When you see a woman dressed in red you feel great relief.”
Valentino and Giammetti have formed a legendary tandem in the world of fashion for decades. When Valentino was asked in an interview what Giammetti meant to him, he replied: “I wouldn’t know how to answer, sharing your entire existence with a person, every moment, joy, pain, enthusiasm, disappointment, is something indefinable.” Both ran Valentino until 1998, when they sold the brand for $300 million to HDP, and even maintained their positions in 2002 when it was bought by the Marzotto group, until their final departure. It was when the Permira fund bought the firm in 2007, although it later moved in 2012 to the Mayhoola fund of the emirs of Qatar, Mayhoola, with a 30% stake in the French luxury emporium Kering.
Giammetti told how Valentino felt that an era was ending for them: “It was becoming a world where he was no longer happy. It’s not that Valentino and I despise money, but we don’t consider it as important as creativity. In recent years we always had to argue with partners. I did it and then informed him, but that was the main reason why, in the end, he said enough.”
