Valentino, fashion maestro who lived it up, has died at 93

Valentino Garavani, the Italian fashion designer who became the arbiter of taste to movie stars and royalty for five decades while outdoing the rich and famous with his extravagant lifestyle, has died, according to his foundation. Valentino died in Rome, at 93. Coiffed and suntanned, the Roman master of haute couture gained a reputation that had Hollywood’s leading ladies, including Elizabeth Taylor, Julia Roberts and Cate Blanchett, clamoring to wear his latest gowns on Oscar night. The father of “Valentino red” — a shade blessed by the color arbiters at Pantone Inc. — achieved global prominence in the 1960s when former U.S. first lady Jacqueline Kennedy became his most valued customer and wore a Valentino dress for her marriage to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. “Fashion is not so complex,” he said in a 2005 interview with New Yorker magazine. “It is about making a woman beautiful. That and nothing else.” With business partner and life companion Giancarlo Giammetti, Valentino became a phenomenon in the fashion industry, dressing everyone from Sophia Loren to Anne Hathaway and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands. He was one of the first Italian designers to venture into licensing for non-clothing items such as housewares and perfume, and his company listed shares on Italy’s stock market before its competitors. After selling Valentino in 1998 for $300 million, he designed for the label until his 2008 retirement. The company was acquired in 2014 by Qatar’s Mayhoola for Investments SPC. In 2023, Kering agreed to buy a 30% stake in the fashion house, with an option to buy the rest. Fashion lines Valentino was best known for his designs of women’s fashion, through lines such as Valentino Roma and Red Valentino. In the late 1960s, he branched out into menswear, with Valentino Uomo and Valentino Boutique. Unlike much of the Italian fashion industry, which moved production from Rome to Milan during the 1970s to mass produce in factories, Valentino remained loyal to the capital, keeping his headquarters there. The Valentino lifestyle became synonymous with opulence as he shuttled between his luxury residences around Europe and the U.S., with his six pug dogs in tow and an entourage of friends, who included actress Gwyneth Paltrow. He owned a villa in Rome, a chalet in Switzerland, an apartment overlooking New York’s Central Park, a mansion in London’s Holland Park and the Wideville estate near Paris, where he claimed to have the world’s largest rose garden on grounds that used to belong to French royalty. All of his abodes were decked out with the finest art by Picasso, Warhol and the like, and he spared no expense with renovations. In summer, Valentino flew each weekend to his fully staffed yacht, wherever it happened to be docked in the Mediterranean Sea. Cinema influence Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani was born on May 11, 1932, in Voghera, a town near Milan in northern Italy. His parents, Teresa de Biaggi and Mauro Garavani, named him after the silent-film star Rudolph Valentino. Valentino would pay tribute to his parents by using their initials in the name of his famous yacht, T.M. Blue One. Valentino’s early interest in fashion stemmed from visits with his sister to the cinema, where he admired stars such as Gene Tierney and Rita Hayworth. Even as a boy, he demanded perfection in his own custom-made clothing. “My mother used to say, ‘How did I produce a son who will only accept the most expensive things?’” Valentino said. He sketched dress designs in his spare time while in high school, then studied fashion in Milan and learned French. In the late 1940s, his passion for red gowns was conceived after he saw a woman wearing a velvet red dress at the opera in Barcelona. At 17, he moved to Paris to study fashion at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. He was an apprentice for Greek couturier Jean Desses for five years and then worked at Guy Laroche before returning to Rome to begin his own label, with the help of his parents. One of his first customers was Elizabeth Taylor, who was in Italy for the filming of Cleopatra (1963). Meeting Giammetti in a café on the glamorous Via Veneto in Rome in 1960, Valentino assigned his business affairs to his new partner after flirting with bankruptcy. The close relationship lasted more than 50 years. Valentino won the prestigious Neiman Marcus Award, the fashion industry’s version of the Oscars, in 1967. He received Italy’s highest honor, the Cavaliere di Gran Croce, in 1986 and an achievement award from the National Italian American Foundation in 1989. The 2009 documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor followed his life’s work, and he had a cameo in The Devil Wears Prada (2006). “I hope I will be remembered as a man who pursued beauty wherever he could,” he said in the New Yorker interview. “But when we are done, we are done. And that will be the end of it. Finito.” By David Henry and Flavia Rotondi

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Valentino, fashion maestro who lived it up, has died at 93