There are designers, and then there are architects of desire. Valentino Garavani belonged firmly to the latter. With his passing in Rome at the age of 93, surrounded by those he loved, fashion has lost not merely a couturier but one of its last true romantics, a man who understood instinctively and unwaveringly, that elegance is not about excess, but about devotion.
I find myself thinking less today about hemlines or silhouettes and more about feeling. About what it meant, for decades, to see a woman step into a Valentino gown and immediately become something heightened: more assured, more luminous, more herself. That was his gift. Valentino didn’t just dress women he believed in them.
Born in Voghera in 1932, named after Rudolph Valentino by a mother who sensed destiny early, Garavani was drawn to beauty almost before he had language for it. Paris refined that instinct. At the École des Beaux-Arts and the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, and later in the ateliers of Jacques Fath, Jean Dessès, Balenciaga, Guy Laroche and Christian Dior, he absorbed discipline, proportion, and restraint. But what emerged was unmistakably his own.
When he returned to Rome in 1959, still not yet 30, he did something audacious: he dreamed unapologetically. The fashion house he founded the following year on Via Condotti was not merely another Italian label, it was a declaration. Rome, not Paris, could be the epicentre of modern glamour and within a few seasons, it was.
Valentino’s rise was meteoric, but it was Jacqueline Kennedy who sealed his success. Her cream lace wedding gown for her marriage to Aristotle Onassis in 1968 which was restrained, exquisite, and devastatingly elegant cemented his place in fashion history. Earlier, she had already entrusted him with her wardrobe during her year of public mourning for President John F. Kennedy, purchasing six black-and-white haute couture dresses that spoke volumes without raising their voice. In dressing Jackie, Valentino dressed grief with dignity and the world noticed.
Hollywood followed, as it always does when elegance becomes undeniable. Audrey Hepburn wore his white lace gown in How to Steal a Million. Elizabeth Taylor chose him for Spartacus and later for her wedding gown. Decades later, Julia Roberts ascended the Oscar stage in his now-iconic black-and-white Y-neck gown, Cate Blanchett accepted her statuette in pale yellow silk taffeta, and Gwyneth Paltrow—who knew him not just as a designer but as a man wrote movingly of his love of beauty, family, and friendship. “This feels like the end of an era,” she said. It is hard to disagree.
Yet if there is one thing that will forever carry his name, it is red.
“Valentino red” was not a marketing invention but an emotional truth, a hue born from a moment at the opera in Barcelona, inspired by an elegant woman glowing against velvet seats and scarlet drapery. A mix of carmine and scarlet with a hint of orange, it became his signature not because it was loud, but because it was alive. Valentino once said, “After black and white, there is no finer colour.” In his hands, red was not provocative it was heroic.
“I think a woman dressed in red is always wonderful,” he wrote in Rosso. “She is the perfect image of a heroine.” Every collection included at least one red dress, a ritual as faithful as it was symbolic. It was his way of insisting that fashion, at its best, should uplift.
Valentino’s designs were often described as romantic, but that word barely captures the precision beneath the poetry. His gowns, deceptively simple at first glance, were feats of craftsmanship, intricate lacework and hand-finished embroidery creating silhouettes that were engineered to honour the body without constraining it. “I love beauty,” he once said. “It is not my fault.”
Inside the legendary designer’s private art collection Valentino was a true visionary, a lover of beauty. He collected exquisite art through post war to modern masters from Jean-Michel Basquiat , Picasso, William de Kooning and Andy Warhol amongst others.
Valentino began collecting Basquiat after the artist’s death, but their paths had crossed decades earlier, during the downtown New York scene of the 1980s.
Valentino’s A/W 21 Haute Couture Show cemented fashion’s relationship with art. The house’s artistic director Pierpaolo Piccioli looked to 16 artists and their unique illustrations to serve as an inspiration for each of the collection’s 84 looks sent down the runway at the historic landmark Gaggiandre.
His partnership with Giancarlo Giammetti was professional, personal, and enduring since 1960 and was central to his success. Together, they built not only a fashion empire but a cultural legacy, supporting the arts through their foundation and opening institutions such as Accademia Valentino and more recently, the PM23 gallery in Rome. Its opening exhibition, Horizons/Red, celebrated the colour that became synonymous with his name.
In the 1970s, Valentino split his time between Rome and New York, becoming a fixture of the international cultural elite. Andy Warhol painted his portrait. Joan Collins wore his power suits in the era of Dynasty and by the mid-1980s, he was Italy’s top fashion exporter. Yet fame never dulled his focus. Even flamboyance, which he wore lightly, never eclipsed the work.
He sold the house in 1998, retired in 2008, and watched as new creative directors interpreted his codes for a changing world. But the DNA remained unmistakable: elegance without irony, glamour without apology.
Tributes to Garavani were led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who wrote on X: “Valentino, undisputed master of style and elegance and eternal symbol of Italian high fashion. Today Italy loses a legend, but his legacy will continue to inspire generations. Thank you for everything.”
Today tributes continue to pour in from designers, actresses, models, and women who may never have worn couture but understood what Valentino stood for. A belief in grace. A reverence for beauty. A refusal to be cynical.
Valentino Garavani will lie in state in Rome before his funeral at the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, a final return to the city that framed his vision. He is survived by Giancarlo Giammetti, by generations of designers he influenced, and by countless women who stood taller because of him.
Fashion moves quickly now faster than he ever liked, but Valentino reminds us that style, true style, is timeless. It does not shout. It does not chase relevance. It endures.
Thank you, Mr Valentino. For the red. For the romance. For reminding us that beauty, when pursued sincerely, is never superficial.
by Kim Grahame
Main photo: Valentino Garavani , Photo courtesy of Fondazione Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti
Photo courtesy of The Value
Photo courtesy of The Value
Photo courtesy of Fondazione Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti
