Valentino (born May 11, 1932, Voghera, Italy) is an Italian fashion designer known for garments in his trademark “Valentino red” (rosso Valentino) and whose style was described as jet-set chic.
As a child, Valentino was interested in both fashion and art. In 1949 he left his home in Voghera, a small town between Turin and Milan, to study fashion sketching at Milan’s Santa Maria Institute. He also enrolled in a Berlitz French course, which proved useful when in 1949 he moved to Paris to attend the École des Beaux-Arts and to study fashion at a school run by the Chambre Syndicale, the French fashion governing body. At that time the Paris fashion scene was a hostile environment for foreigners, particularly Italians. But Valentino won a competition for fashion design run by the International Wool Secretariat (the same prize that Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld won in subsequent years), and his prize led to a job at the French couture house of Jean Dessès.
In 1957 Guy Laroche, an illustrator at Dessès, decided to set up his own fashion house, and Valentino worked with him for two years. In 1959 Valentino returned to Rome and, with the financial backing of his father, presented his first collection in his own salon on Via Condotti. Elizabeth Taylor, who was in Rome shooting Cleopatra at the time, spotted Valentino’s work and placed her order for a white dress, which she wore for the world premiere of Spartacus. Valentino’s fate was sealed. In 1960 Valentino met Giancarlo Giametti, an architecture student, who became his partner in charge of the commercial side of the business. Valentino debuted his first couture fashion line in 1962 at the Pitti Palace in Florence and began to establish an international reputation. Well-known personalities soon sought him out for designs, including Belgian Queen Paola, Princess Margaret of England, Audrey Hepburn, and Jacqueline Kennedy. Valentino designed many dresses for Kennedy, including the dress she wore to her husband’s funeral in 1963 and then, in 1968, a dress for her wedding to Aristotle Onassis.
Though Valentino’s trademark colour was red, it was a 1967 collection entirely of white, ivory, and beige clothes—his “no colour” collection—that thrust him into the fashion spotlight and for which he was awarded the Neiman Marcus Award. That collection stood in stark contrast to the bold psychedelic patterns of the time. With the “no colour” collection he also launched his trademark V logo. In 1969 he opened his first ready-to-wear shop in Milan. He opened stores in New York City and Rome the following year. The designer went on to enjoy an extremely successful and illustrious career, serving high society and the entertainment world. He and Giametti sold the company in 1998, though Valentino remained the designer. In 2006 he received the French Legion of Honour medal, and he retired in 2008. That year he was the subject of the documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor.