Valentino was a fashion designer who rose above fashion trends

IT ALL STARTED, Valentino Garavani remembered, with “Ziegfeld Girl” (1941). He went to see the film when he was young. The beauty of its stars, including Lana Turner and Judy Garland, had been enhanced by their costumes: fringed gowns, feathers and billowing overskirts.

“From that moment,” he later recalled, “I decided I wanted to create clothes for ladies.” Over the course of an almost 70-year career, he did just that—and more. Mr Garavani (pictured), who died on January 19th, aged 93, founded a fashion empire that is worth around $6bn. He earned a reputation as one of the 20th century’s greatest designers: the “last emperor” of haute couture, as a documentary in 2008 called him.

Valentino—it did not take long for him to become a mononym—studied in Milan, then Paris, learning from masters such as Cristóbal Balenciaga and Guy Laroche. In 1959 he launched his own fashion house in Rome with some help from his father.

His design sensibilities were evident from the start. He worked with graceful silhouettes and luxurious fabrics. His gowns were always sophisticated—and very often sexy—but never stuffy. Later Valentino stamped his authority on shoes, too. The Rockstud, a pointed slingback heel adorned with triangular studs, became a cult item. (Alessandro Michele, Valentino’s creative director, has launched a new design for the 2026 collection.)

Another constant was his trademark colour, red, resembling a poppy’s bright petals. It was inspired by the world of performance. The couturier’s strongest memory of seeing “Carmen” in Barcelona was the opera house’s sumptuous costumes and velvet interiors. Valentino included a red dress in almost every collection.

It was fitting, then, that actresses brought him fame, starting with Elizabeth Taylor, who wore one of his designs to mark the release of “Spartacus” (1960). She soon returned to Valentino’s atelier to claim seven outfits in return for the publicity. Hollywood stars often chose Valentino for awards ceremonies.

Valentino’s aesthetic won him other important clients. After John F. Kennedy’s murder, Jackie Kennedy asked Valentino to make her mourning clothes; she later wore a short dress from his “white collection” to marry Aristotle Onassis. Royal brides in Greece, the Netherlands and Sweden turned to Valentino for their wedding dresses, too, believing he could conjure up the majesty required for the occasion.

To be sure, Valentino was never much interested in the logistics of running a business. In 1960, when he was on the verge of bankruptcy, he met Giancarlo Giammetti, who would become his business partner (and for 12 years his lover). The company has since changed hands more often than most garments on the racks at vintage stores: it is now jointly owned by Qatari investors and Kering, a luxury conglomerate.

But Valentino endured because he kept his vision of old-world romanticism. His collections did not hew to trends, whether grunge or power dressing. (The 1980s, with their exaggerated shoulder pads, were an “extremely vulgar” time, he thought.) When you look at designs by Dior or Yves Saint Laurent, it is easy to situate yourself in a particular time period, says Olivier Gabet, director of the Louvre’s decorative-arts department, which recently hosted a couture show. “When you go through the archives of Valentino, it’s very, very difficult to say: ‘There’s the 1970s’ or ‘There’s the ’80s.’” Valentino’s work has a certain “timeless elegance”.

His relationship with the silver screen came full circle. Valentino made a cameo in “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006), the greatest film about the fashion industry; the movie dramatised one of his catwalk shows. In a nod to his stature, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the fearsome tastemaker at the helm of Runway magazine, greets him warmly backstage as “maestro”. In the teaser trailer for “The Devil Wears Prada 2”, which will be released in May, Miranda is pictured strutting into the elevator of the Runway offices in—what else?—a pair of red Valentino Rockstud heels. ■