Valentino Garavani dies aged 93, celebrated couturier to high society and celebrities

Valentino Garavani has died aged 93, the designer whose half-century of couture made him a dressmaker to royalty, film stars and social leaders from the Dolce Vita era to the 2000s. His work was celebrated in exhibitions, including Valentino: Master of Couture at Somerset House in 2012, which showed more than a hundred outfits and samples of the techniques used by his couture ateliers.

The definitive Valentino dress, the obituary says, often combined handmade lace and painstaking seamwork by his ragazze; he prioritised the needs of the wearer over leading fashion in cut or mood. Born in Voghera, Lombardy, Valentino trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and apprenticed with Jean Dessès and Guy Laroche.

He opened his first couture studio on the Via Condotti in Rome in 1959, met business partner Giancarlo Giammetti in 1960, showed at the Pitti Palace in 1962 and began selling directly in New York in 1964. His clients included Elizabeth Taylor, Jacqueline Kennedy, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Cate Blanchett and, the obituary notes, J-Lo at the Oscars in the 2000s.

The house expanded into ready-to-wear and licences, with up to 42 deals at one point, and was sold to the Italian conglomerate HdP in 1998 for $300m, then passed through several owners before a Qatari consortium took control in 2012. Valentino showed his final collection in 2008 and thereafter designed only for a few favoured clients and the ballet.

Key Topics

Culture, Valentino Garavani, Giancarlo Giammetti, Somerset House, Pitti Palace, Voghera