The passion for fashion was born for Valentino Garavani at a very young age. He was but a boy when he began attending a figurine school at the Istituto Santa Marta in Milan and, at only 17, he chose Paris with the full support of his family. In the capital of Haute Couture, he trained in the ateliers of Jean Dessès and Guy Laroche, where he learned the haute couture techniques that would become the hallmark of his creations.
It was 1960 when, back in Rome, he opened his tailoring workshop on Via Condotti. From that moment, sustained by the indissoluble and very special professional and personal partnership with Giancarlo Giammetti, Valentino became synonymous with timeless Italian elegance, capable of contaminating the entire world with his refined and deeply personal vision.
“I have always had the same style, despite changing trends or external pressures,” he said in an interview with Vogue in 2018. And so it has been throughout his life, and for the 45 years he has devoted to leading the brand that now bears his name and that under his creative direction has built one of the most consistent and recognizable aesthetic codes in fashion history.
Valentino Garavani together with Giancarlo Giammetti.
A language of contrasts and romance imbued at the same time with strength and sensuality. Black and white as graphic foundations, red (the legendary Valentino Red) as an emotional and visual statement, but also a more intimate palette of powder pink, ivory, nude and sweet sugary tones. Added to these were flowing silks, bows, ruffles, lace, and minute embroideries: these seemingly decorative elements, but in fact always subordinated to a very strict sartorial construction, were the iron rules of his grammar.
A complex language that plundered the imagery of art and the stylings of theater for mythological défilés enchanting the jet set and the Hollywood star system, because in its innate and instinctive elegance the world’s most beautiful women were recognized (from Elizabeth Taylor to Audrey Hepburn, Princess Margareth of England to the Belgian Queen Paola, to Jacqueline Kennedy and today’s movie divas).
A style that was rigorous rather than innovative, despite the techniques that made the history of tailoring and the Maison, such as the page effect and the gut technique, true to itself even in its innovations, alive in an almost timeless dimension, where elegance was the result of impeccable proportions, color balance and absolute control of form.
The unforgettable style of Valentino Garavani
As maniacal in the cuts of his ultra-elegant runway gowns as he was in those he wore on a daily basis, tailor-made by the historic Roman tailor shop Caraceni, Valentino is known worldwide as much for his sumptuous evening gowns as for his immaculate, inimitable personal style.
An unbuttoned double-breasted jacket, a cashmere-print scarf, a creamy white linen suit, ties knotted with precision. Then jeans, paired with sports jackets and button-down shirts. constructed the uniforms that today help us portray him in the collective imagination alongside Andy Wahrol, Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren, icons who, as with him, have dominated entire decades of fashion history.
A very young Valentino Garavani in 1968. On his wrist he wears a Cartier Tank.
Formal in the suits, which were his personal uniform. Flamboyant in the jewelry and watches, which he often wore together without hierarchy, as they stuck on each other peeking out from the cuffs of his immaculate shirts.
In photo Valentino is wearing a Piaget Polo in yellow gold along with other gold and diamond jewelry.
Valentino loved to wear important jewelry, with exaggerated carats disproportionate to the almost monastic chastity of his clothes. These were complemented by watches: great classics such as Cartier watches-among them the Tank, the Cintrée Dual Time, and the Pasha and iconic pieces such as the Piaget Polo in yellow gold, an extraordinary watch designed by Yves Piaget in 1979 for an ultra-thin quartz movement, beloved by celebrities such as Andy Warhol.
In photo Valentino Garavani wears a Tank Cintreè Dual Time in yellow gold.
In this archive photo, the couturier is wearing a yellow gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, in his collection along with a simpler Datejust.
In those years, the Daytona was produced in two different carats: 14 and 18 carats. The production of Daytona in 14 carats continued until the 1980s, mainly for the American market, fora percentage related to taxes, which were significantly higher for 18-karat gold.
Portrayed with his beloved pugs and his muse, supermodel Linda Evangelista, Valentino pairs a pinstriped suit with an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak “Baby Oak” with a quartz movement and a small 26mm steel case, which is decades ahead of today’s trend of mini watch. As relevant today as it was then, nearly two decades later.
Shot by Jean Paul Goude for Harper’s Bazaar, 2007.
Despite the easy beauty of certain pieces, it was only his very personal taste for the beautiful that drove him, and proving it is a diverse collection that also includes two opulent Jacob & Co in pavé rubies and baguette-cut diamonds.
A composite masculinity, his, which flirted with excess and glitz while maintaining an image of perfect balance. A combination of contrasts that traced the designs of his Maison – sumptuous, elegant, of an old-fashioned romanticism – and a life devoted to luxury, lived astride a 49-meter yacht, a Roman villa on the Appa Antica, and a 17th-century castle with a park of more than 300 acres. As flamboyant in life as he was impeccable and park-like in his personal style.
Valentino Garavani with a Cartier Pasha Moonphase Perpetual, with a 38mm case in yellow gold.
His birth name was Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani. To the world he was simply Valentino, the last emperor of fashion. To his chosen friends, just Vava. The Sheik of Chic, for Americans, in the words of John Fairchild, because his name and style reached and inspired the spaces not only of fashion, but also of theater, film, and culture.
The genius of enchantment, the last Emperor of fashion, who conquered Paris and the whole world from Rome, was a man who loved beauty as others loved power, with the same ferocity, the same inability to compromise. “I love beauty, it’s not my fault,” he would say, because his life was devoted to beauty and beauty alone.
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