News from Italy
City Lights: Rosso Valentino:
The Italian Mythology of a Color
di Andira Vitale
In Italy, beauty is not a choice. It is a culture. A legacy. A way of life. And Valentino Garavani was one of the greatest names capable of transforming that legacy into fabric.
He reinvented red -the color of love and passion- making it synonymous with his own name. Bringing elegance not as a mere garment but as a destiny, Valentino Garavani was not only the last emperor of couture. He was the living symbol of the Italian idea of grace. And his story was written in a single color: Rosso Valentino.
He was a designer who loved women. He composed the poetry of femininity in the lightness of silk, and the magnificence of love in the fire of red. He left behind not only dresses, but the splendor of an era. Because Valentino’s signature never changed: elegance, mastery, and a life devoted to beauty.
When he passed away in his home in Rome on January 19, 2026, the fashion world did not lose merely a designer. Italy bid farewell to a chapter of its own aesthetic history.
A Fairy Tale from Rome to the World
Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani was born on May 11, 1932, in Voghera, northern Italy. He described his passion for fashion as “an illness that has lasted since childhood.” He summed up his dream like this:
“To create clothes for women… This was the dream of my life.”
After studying at the Academy of Art in Milan, he moved to Paris at only seventeen. In the salons of the École des Beaux-Arts and under the discipline of the Chambre Syndicale, he learned the language of haute couture. Recalling those years, he said with a smile:
“My rivals were two unknown boys like me: Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld…”
He worked alongside Jean Dessès and in the atelier of Guy Laroche. But Valentino’s soul was never French. His aesthetic was Italian: romantic, solemn, full of light.
When he returned to Rome in 1959, the maison he opened on Via dei Condotti became the most refined temple of Made in Italy. Rome was not merely a backdrop for Valentino: it was a character. Baroque stones. Nights of la dolce vita. The golden age of cinema. His couture was not an industry, but a ritual.
Giancarlo Giammetti: Love and Partnership
In 1960, on Via Veneto, Valentino met Giancarlo Giammetti a moment that would ignite both love and empire in his life. Thus was born one of the most elegant partnerships in the history of couture. In the heart of Rome’s nightlife, at Café de Paris, Giancarlo appeared before Valentino as a name written into his destiny.
Giammetti was a student at the Valle Giulia School of Architecture, the son of Rome’s wealthy elite. He disliked studying, rejected routine, and instead loved architecture, art, and imagination.
That summer encounter quite literally changed both of their lives. Their partnership began in the nightclubs of Via Veneto and in the atelier at Piazza Mignanelli, later moving to Via Gregoriana, transforming Rome into a kind of Hollywood on the Tiber, alongside the studios of other fashion houses.
Their professional roles were immediately clear: one was the creator, the other the strategist. As friends would say, Valentino was the talent, Giancarlo was the brain. A twelve-year romance evolved into more than half a century of professional harmony. One designed, the other built. While Valentino focused on beauty, Giammetti carried the brand to the world. Fashion shows, organization, and commercial strategy were entrusted to him.
It was not merely a maison de couture, it became an empire. An empire inspired by French tradition, yet illuminated by an Italian soul.
Their romantic relationship effectively ended in 1972, yet their bond remained unbreakable. Forever connected, they continued to speak and argue only in French.
Giammetti himself revealed the secret of love’s lasting power:“All my life, I did everything I could to make Valentino’s life peaceful. I speak with him every day. We meet, and I feel that he is happy when he sees me. I think that is my greatest pride.”
Valentino Red: When a Color Becomes Legend
This is not merely a shade of red. It is an identity. It carries Italy’s passion. It evokes the warmth of Rome. It suggests love, desire, drama… In the end, Valentino’s name would become inseparable from a single color: Rosso Valentino. But this red was not a tone, it became a mythology.
When he was young, a red velvet dress he saw at the Barcelona Opera left an eternal mark on his memory. He was deeply struck by the white-haired woman wrapped in crimson velvet.
Later, he would say: “Among all the colors other women wore, she seemed unique to me, separated by her magnificence. I never forgot her. I believe a woman in red is always enchanting; she is the perfect image of a heroine.”
That extraordinary hue — suspended between red and orange, like Carmen herself — settled at the very center of Valentino’s aesthetic universe.
It was first introduced in 1959 through a strapless, draped tulle cocktail dress. Over time, it became not only the signature of his collections, but the unmistakable emblem of the Valentino brand.
In every collection, at least one red dress was always present. Because for him, red was not simply a color, it was a stance. A woman in red was always magnificent. And red was the couture translation of the Italian soul.
In 1962, he made his grand debut in Florence’s Sala Bianca: one of the second generation of Italian designers creating new images, new ideas, new styles.
Fashion critic Eugenia Sheppard of the International Herald Tribune called him, in 1967:
“The Rolls Royce of fashion. His style shares the same qualities as the greats, Dior, Jacques Fath, Balenciaga. Something intangible, like beauty or sexual allure, yet something every woman wants to buy.”
The Purity of White and the Architecture of Elegance
In 1968, Valentino’s White Collection revealed that he understood not only passion, but purity as well. Jacqueline Kennedy entered history wearing Valentino’s ivory wedding gown on the day she married Aristotle Onassis. That dress became the symbol of how haute couture could merge with Italian elegance.
In Valentino’s world, fabrics spoke. Pleats fell like sunlight. Embroidery was stitched like the syllables of a poem. Bows, feathers, lace… All were notes in a symphony of grace.
Hollywood, Royalty, and the Red Carpet
Rome was the capital of cinema in the 1960s. And Valentino became the tailor of the stars. Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg… Taylor shone at the Spartacus premiere in one of his white couture gowns. Years later, from Princess Diana to Farah Pahlavi, from Julia Roberts to Jennifer Lopez, countless women carried Valentino’s magnificence upon their shoulders.
Wearing vintage Valentino on Oscar night was not merely fashion , it was a declaration of culture. The couture aristocracy stretching from Princess Diana to Farah Pahlavi transformed Valentino’s Italian elegance into a global language.
“I Love Beauty”
Valentino was a perfectionist. His manifesto was hidden in a single sentence: “I love beauty. It’s not my fault.”
He knew what women wanted: to be beautiful. And he carried that beauty to the highest realm of haute couture. His couture never became anonymous. Because in Italy, beauty is not an industry, it is a faith. Pleats fell like Roman light. Lace was embroidered like a love letter.
The Final Show and a Silent Farewell
In 2007, Valentino was honored with a magnificent celebration in Rome. In 2008, he stepped onto the Paris runway for the last time. “I wanted to leave while the party was still crowded,” he said.
When he bid farewell to the catwalk, an era of couture came to an end. The documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor turned his and Giammetti’s retirement into a cinematic goodbye. But Valentino’s party never truly ended.
The Last Emperor of Fashion
Valentino Garavani remained one of the last great names to defend ceremony and magnificence in an era when fashion accelerated, simplified, and became anonymous.
In his world, red was not merely a color, it was a claim, a love, an aesthetic measure. What remained behind were not only dresses… But a living memory of what haute couture once meant.
As Sophia Loren once said: “Your art and your passion will remain an eternal source of inspiration…”
And Valentino will no longer live only in the archives of fashion, but in the heart of time itself. Yet Valentino’s legacy did not remain in Paris… It stayed in Rome.
When Valentino Garavani died on January 19, 2026, what was left behind was not merely a brand, but a language:
The language of elegance. And the most unforgettable word in that language: Rosso.
Some designers are forgotten.
But some… Dissolve into the light of Rome.