Italian fashion designer Valentino Garavani has died, his foundation announced on Monday.
He was 93 years old.
"Valentino Garavani passed away today at his residence in Rome, surrounded by his loved ones," the foundation said in a post on Instagram.
It is added that the funeral will be held in Rome on Friday at 11 a.m., while the memorial service will be held on Wednesday and Thursday.
Valentino was ranked alongside Giorgio Armani and Karl Lagerfeld as one of the last great designers from the era before fashion became a global, highly commercial industry, run as much by accountants and marketing executives as by high fashion designers.
Lagerfeld passed away in 2019, while Armani died in September last year.
Reaching the pinnacle of haute couture, Valentino was the first Italian to appear on the exclusive runways of Parisian haute couture.
Passionate about film, as a young man he dreamed of dressing "beautiful ladies from the silver screen," as he called them, among them 1950s Hollywood stars Lana Turner and Judy Garland.
Valentino would later design Elizabeth Taylor's wedding dress, and was the first choice of numerous Oscar winners, including Sharon Stone and Penelope Cruz.
His romantic designs, seemingly simple, were full of intricate details. "I love beauty," Valentino would say. "It's not my fault. And I know what women want: they want to be beautiful."
The designer who dressed Jackie Kennedy built a business empire under his own name before selling the company on the eve of his retirement in 2008, Reuters reports.
"It takes a lot of patience"
Valentino was an only child, born into a wealthy family in Vođera, south of Milan, where his father ran an electrical equipment company.
Having begun drawing and appreciating expensive clothes as a child, he studied haute couture in Milan and Paris, where he then apprenticed with designer Jean Dese. He returned to Italy in 1960 and opened his own fashion house in Rome.
That year, Elizabeth Taylor chose a white Valentino dress for the premiere of the blockbuster "Spartacus."
Also in 1960, in a Roman café, he met Giancarlo, who would become his partner in business and life.
"Sharing life with someone throughout your entire existence - every moment, joy, pain, delight, disappointment - is something that cannot be defined," Valentino said of him.
Đammeti took over the managerial part of the job, while leaving the creative decisions to the designer.
"Being with Valentino as a friend, as a lover and as an employee - it's a bit the same: it takes a lot of patience," Giammetti said in the documentary "Valentino: The Last Emperor," which followed the designer during the last two years of his career.
Valentino's georgette fabrics, chiffon ruffles and lavish embellishments, including the exclusive "budelin" technique - in which long strips of sheep's wool are hand-rolled into tubes, wrapped in silk and then sewn - earned him numerous awards, including France's highest civilian decoration in 2006.
"Fame and fortune haven't changed him," Giammetti said at the time. "He's still the same little guy I met 45 years ago."
Superstitious and introverted, Valentino loved chocolate, skiing, and his pugs. In an interview with "Korijere" in 2017, he said he was afraid of death.
"The perfect moment to say goodbye"
In 2007, he wowed Rome with a lavish celebration of his decades in fashion – a three-day event that included dinners, parties and exhibitions, with thousands of guests traveling from all over the world.
A few months later, he announced that he was stopping designing for the company, which he no longer controlled after selling the firm almost a decade earlier for about $300 million.
"I've decided this is the perfect time to say goodbye to the fashion world," he said. "As the English say, I want to leave the party while it's still full."
His last show was held in January 2008 in Paris, a city he called his second home and which he said taught him to love fashion and life.
The company that bears his name was bought by Qatari fund Majhula for 700 million euros in 2012. French luxury group Kering bought a 30 percent stake in 2023, with an obligation to fully take over the business from 2026, but the move was then postponed, until 2028 at the earliest.
Valentino and Giammetti remained active in supporting the arts. Their foundation opened the PM23 gallery in downtown Rome in 2025, next to Valentino's headquarters.
Fittingly, the first exhibition - "Horizons/Red" - was dedicated to the color most associated with Valentine.
"Red is not just a color," Giammetti said at the time. "It is a symbolic and aesthetic force of extraordinary power."
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