Couture. Spring-Summer 1983. Black dress with silver-white embroidery, B\u00fcckles with a huge multiple bow at the side, in chiffon and taffeta. Gloves, bracelet, and earrings by Valentino. Vogue Italia, March 1983. Photo \u00a9\u2009David Bailey.<\/p>\n
As for the 2000s, Giammetti recalls, \u201cthe fashion companies, not just Valentino, became conglomerates, became groups. More heads telling you what to do; more people that we never knew who they were, but they were able to have importance. What was taken was the freedom of Valentino, his courage, and when you don\u2019t have courage, you don\u2019t produce the same thing in a nice way. You try to make everybody happy\u2014and you make no one happy. So Valentino started to decide, \u2018I don\u2019t want to live like this.\u2019 And this happened a few years later, in 2006. We were thoughtful, because you don\u2019t just leave a company with your name after 40 years. But for us it was much more important to have the dignity of staying who we are, be who we are, believe in what we do, and not be one of those designers in the hands of business people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garavani and Giammetti\u2019s relationship\u2014they famously met as teenagers in a cafe in Rome; the rest is literally history\u2014is discussed by them in the book. \u201cThis is not a story about money or fashion,\u201d Giammetti says in their conversation. \u201cIt is a story of love.\u201d When I ask Mr. Giammetti for his favorite image in the book, he promptly chooses a candid Jonathan Becker image of him and Valentino on a private jet, both men caught in, shall we say, candid discussion. \u201cOur life has not always been, \u2018Oh, we agree\u2019,\u201d Giammetti says, laughing. \u201cAnd because there is a certain moment where there is no need to share everything; when you trust somebody and you know what he does is the best for all of us, it\u2019s stupid to complain. But of course if you remember there was a movie, The Last Emperor,\u201d Giammetti went on to say, \u201cin which Mr. Tyrnauer, who was the director, loved to emphasize our disputes, which was fun for the film, but not really the essence of us together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Couture. Spring-Summer 1983. Black dress with silver-white embroidery, B\u00fcckles with a huge multiple bow at the side, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88,28402],"class_list":{"0":"post-34256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-valentino"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}