Valentino

Fashion Design   Apparel Definition

Paris Training, a Roman House

Valentino Garavani was born on May 11, 1932 in Voghera, Italy, became interested in fashion while in high school, and studied under the Vogherese designer Ernestina Salvadeo, an aunt of the artist Aldo Giorgini. At 17 he moved to Paris to pursue the interest, studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. His first apprentice jobs were with Jean Desses, where he helped Jacqueline de Ribes sketch her dress ideas, and he then joined Jean Desses and Guy Laroche. He moved to Rome at the beginning of the 1960s and started his own fashion house, Valentino, and his first show in 1962 was a success. The sequence is a complete couture apprenticeship of its era: a local teacher, Paris schools, Paris ateliers, and then a house of his own — placed in Rome rather than back in Paris.

A White Collection and a V

In 1967 he premiered the Valentino White Collection, which became famous for the "V" logo he designed. A collection built on a single colour and a collection that introduces a logo are two different achievements recorded in one sentence: the white dresses demonstrated the design, and the V gave the house a repeatable mark. The white dress that Jacqueline Kennedy wore to her wedding with Aristotle Onassis belongs to the same period and the same colour story, and it attached the house's name to one of the most photographed weddings of its time. Through the 1970s Valentino spent considerable time in New York City, where his presence was embraced by social personalities such as Steve Rubell and art identities such as Andy Warhol — a Roman couturier received as part of New York's social and art world, designing menswear and womenswear with his own perfume and make-up line.

Designing On, and the L.I.F.E. Association

In 1990 he cofounded the L.I.F.E. Association with Giancarlo Giammetti, a program for the support of AIDS victims. Giancarlo Giammetti is the partner associated with the business side of the house, so the association places the fashion house's two central figures behind a health support programme founded at the height of the AIDS crisis. He is described here as now 73 years old, still designing, and living in Rome — the city where he founded the house more than four decades earlier. The entry therefore holds a complete arc in a few lines: a Voghera schoolboy interested in fashion, Paris training under Jean Desses and Guy Laroche, a successful first show in Rome in 1962, a famous white collection and a V logo in 1967, and a designer still working in Rome in his seventies.