Italian couturier Valentino Garavani has died at 93. His departure marks the end of an era, yet his influence persists in the most tangible way possible: through a single, unmistakable shade of red.
Valentino Red, officially recognised by Pantone, has become shorthand for a certain kind of confidence, the kind that transforms whoever wears it, whatever space it inhabits.
The story begins in a Barcelona opera house, where Garavani watched Bizets Carmen and spotted a woman in red velvet. She stood out like a jewel against the sea of other colours. That moment crystallised something for the young designer: reds capacity to command attention, to elevate the ordinary into the extraordinary. His 1959 Fiesta collection, launched the same year he founded his atelier on Via Condotti in Rome, introduced that arresting shade. It was the first of many.
What followed was a six-decade exploration of reds possibilities. Garavani worked the colour into velvet drapes that pooled like wine, lace so delicate it seemed to float, embellishments heavy with beads and roses and fringes and feathers. The Valentino archives contain over 500 couture pieces in variations of red, each one precisely calibrated.
Red carpets became the shades natural habitat, adorning everyone from Jackie Kennedy to Elizabeth Taylor. Even after Garavanis 2008 retirement, his successors have kept the flame alive, adapting the shade to contemporary contexts whilst preserving its essential character.
Last year, Garavani and his life and business partner Giancarlo Giammetti, whom he met in 1960, one year after founding the house, opened PM23, a cultural hub in Romes Piazza Mignanelli, the original headquarters of Valentino. Its inaugural exhibition, Horizons/Red, paired 50 of Garavanis iconic red creations spanning 1959 to 2008 with 30 contemporary artworks exploring reds symbolic weight.
