Valentino, the stylist

Valentino: the red of elegance, a life devoted to beauty, love, and places of the soul

Valentino Garavani is not merely a fashion designer: he is an idea of beauty that has spanned more than half a century of history, remaining remarkably intact. His name has become synonymous with absolute elegance, with luxury that never flaunts itself, with a femininity that is at once regal and sensual. Behind the legend lies a life lived with the same intensity and coherence with which he dressed some of the most iconic women in the world.

Born in Voghera in 1932, Valentino discovered his calling for fashion at a very young age. He studied in Milan and later in Paris, where he trained in the great French maisons, absorbing the rigor of haute couture and the discipline of the craft. Yet it was his return to Italy, to Rome, that marked the birth of his creative universe. In the 1960s he founded his fashion house and immediately established a recognizable style: pure lines, impeccable tailoring, bold, decisive colors. Among them, one would become legendary: Valentino red, a shade that came to symbolize passion, power, and seduction.

International success followed swiftly. His creations captivated princesses, first ladies, actresses, and queens of the entertainment world. Jackie Kennedy chose him for her most intimate and solemn wardrobe, Elizabeth Taylor embodied his theatrical flair, while Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale celebrated his unmistakable Italian spirit. Valentino became the designer of great occasions, of moments destined to remain in the collective memory. Each of his gowns seemed designed to enter history.

But Valentino’s life was not shaped solely by runways and accolades. It is also the story of a lifelong love: that with Giancarlo Giammetti, whom he met in 1960. A romantic partner and a strategic mind, Giammetti was the other half of the maison’s success. If Valentino was the artist, Giancarlo was the quiet architect who built the empire. Their bond—deep, enduring, and rare in the world of fashion and celebrity—was founded on mutual respect, a shared vision, and unwavering loyalty.

Alongside love stands a devotion to place. Valentino is an aesthete not only in what he creates, but in how he inhabits the world. Rome remains his emotional and creative center: the Eternal City, with its baroque theatricality and sublime decay, perfectly mirrors his idea of beauty. Yet his gaze has always been cosmopolitan. Paris, the city of his training and of structured elegance, holds a fundamental place in his imagination, while New York became the stage of his global success.

And then there are the retreats of the soul: Château de Wideville, near Paris, a historic residence restored with a near-obsessive love of detail; and above all, the sea, with homes in Capri and along the French Riviera. In these places, far from the spotlight, Valentino allows himself the rarest luxury of all: contemplation. Here he devotes himself to art, to his beloved dogs, and to beauty as a daily, deliberate practice.

In 2008, Valentino officially retired from the runway with a landmark show in Rome, greeted by worldwide acclaim. It was not a farewell, but a definitive consecration. His legacy is not only aesthetic, but ethical: the defense of haute couture as an art form, slowness as a value, elegance as an expression of respect.

Today, Valentino remains an almost mythological figure—distant from the noise of the present, yet profoundly relevant. In a world that consumes everything too quickly, he has shown that true beauty does not follow trends: it passes through them, transcends them, and endures. Like the red that bears his name.

Foto di Luciann Photography