Valentino and his longtime partner Giancarlo Giammetti flitted among their homes — which also included places in New York, London, Rome, Capri and Gstaad, Switzerland — traveling with their pack of pugs. The pair regularly received A-list friends and patrons, including Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow.
“When I see somebody and unfortunately she’s relaxed and running around in jogging trousers and without any makeup … I feel very sorry,” the designer told RTL television in a 2007 interview. “For me, woman is like a beautiful, beautiful flower bouquet. She has always to be sensational, always to please, always to be perfect, always to please the husband, the lover, everybody. Because we are born to show ourselves always at our best.”
Valentino was born into a well-off family in the northern Italian town of Voghera on May 11, 1932. He said it was his childhood love of cinema that set him down the fashion path.
“I was crazy for silver screen, I was crazy for beauty, to see all those movie stars being sensation, well dressed, being always perfect,” he explained in the 2007 television interview.
After studying fashion in Milan and Paris, he spent much of the 1950s working for established Paris-based designer Jean Desses and later Guy Laroche before striking out on his own. He founded the house of Valentino on Rome’s Via Condotti in 1959.
From the beginning, Giammetti was by his side, handling the business aspect while Valentino used his natural charm to build a client base among the world’s rich and fabulous.
After some early financial setbacks — Valentino’s tastes were always lavish, and the company spent with abandon — the brand took off.
Valentino and Sophia Loren in New York City in 1992.Ron Galella / Getty Images file
Early fans included Italian screen sirens Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren, as well as Hollywood stars Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn. Legendary American Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland also took the young designer under her wing.
Over the years, Valentino’s empire expanded as the designer added ready-to-wear, menswear and accessories lines to his stable. Valentino and Giammetti sold the label to an Italian holding company for an estimated $300 million in 1998. Valentino would remain in a design role for another decade.
In 2007, the couturier feted his 45th anniversary in fashion with a 3-day-long blowout in Rome, capped with a grand ball in the Villa Borghese gallery.
Valentino retired in 2008 and was briefly replaced by fellow Italian Alessandra Facchinetti, who had stepped into Tom Ford’s shoes at Gucci before being sacked after two seasons.
Facchinetti’s tenure at Valentino proved equally short. As early as her first show for the label, rumors swirled that she was already on her way out, and just about one year after she was hired, Facchinetti was indeed replaced by two longtime accessories designers at the brand, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli.
Chiuri left to helm Dior in 2016, and Piccioli continued to lead the house through a golden period that drew on the launch of the Rockstud pump with Chiuri and his own signature color, a shade of fuchsia called Pink PP. He left the house in 2024, later joining Balenciaga, and has been replaced by Alessandro Michele, who revived Gucci’s stars with romantic, genderless styles.