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Valentino Garavani’s death casts long shadow over Opening Day Paris Men’s Fashion Week front row guests and industry insiders mourned the death of one of the last great figures in 20th-century fashion on Tuesday. Italian The designer’s working life is closely linked with the Paris fashion shows.
Valentino dies at 93 Rome Valentino Garavani and the Giancarlo Giammetti Foundation said in a statement announcing his death at his residence. While he was building his house in Rome, he spent decades France.
He “was one of the last major fashion designers to truly embody 20th-century fashion,” said Pierre Groppo, fashion editor of Vogue. vanity fair France.
In this day of touting the future, many panelists said they were thinking about what the fashion industry has lost: fashion designers as a living institution.
Grobo pointed to the codes that made Valentino instantly legible—”polka dots, ruffles, knots”—and to a generation of designers who, he said, “in a way, invented celebrity culture.”
Valentino’s vision is founded on a simple idea: to make women look radiant and then make the moment unforgettable.
He dressed the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor, fixed his signature “Valentino red” in the public imagination, and, through his decades-long collaboration with Giancarlo Giammetti, helped the designer himself become part of the landscape, as easily identifiable as his front-row clients.
The end of a fashion era
Famed fashion writer Luke Leitch described the loss in equally hyperbolic terms, calling Valentino “fashion’s last ‘behemoth of that generation'” and saying it was “definitely” the end of a certain category of designers: figures whose names could hold their own on a global scale, whose authority came not from viral speed but from eternity.
Valentino, who trained in Paris before founding his own fashion house in Rome, was a rare bridge figure: Italian by birth but well-versed in the rituals that made the Paris fashion industry a style thing. His career shuttled between the two elegant capitals, bringing the splendor of Rome into a system that still viewed fashion not just as commerce but as ritual.
As one Associated Press reporter observed, even as he grew older, the brand’s founder continued to appear at fashion and ready-to-wear shows until he eventually retired from public life, while exuding quiet authority from the front row seat.
For some in Paris on Tuesday, the loss was personal because Valentino’s world was never just Italy.
Grobo recalled that the designer was “more than a fashion brand,” adding: “It was a lifestyle.”
Even as fashion accelerates toward louder brands and faster cycles, this lifestyle—haute couture, social glamour, and the belief that elegance can be a strength—remains a reference point.
“It’s sad because he was so important to the fashion world and he contributed so much and I can’t forget the amazing red he created,” said Chinese fashion influencer Lolo Zhang, who attended the Louis Vuitton show in Paris.
“He always celebrated pure beauty, silhouetted architecture and how he used color. The old days were just passing.”
Other guests described a delayed realization – one that only occurs when a seemingly eternal figure suddenly disappears.
YSL, Chanel and Valentino
“Some people want to be Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel…some people spontaneously become Valentino,” said Gee Claude, a fashion insider. “It’s an identity issue.”
For Parisian fashion observer Benedict Apinay, grief is closely linked to memory. Valentino’s final bow was filled with emotion.
“It was a really great moment. I was lucky enough to be at the last show he ever had,” Apinay said. “It was so touching because we knew right then and there it was going to be the last show.”
Fashion observer Arfan Ghani noted what Valentino represents for young designers: a restrained standard of “elegance” in an age that often rewards noise.
“Because it’s very classic material,” Ghani said. “Its branding isn’t as loud as a lot of other brands.”
Parisian sculptor Ranti Bam uses formal language to describe Valentino: the structure loses trend, the lines lose appearance.
“As a sculptor, I see Valentino as an artist,” Bam said. “He transcended fashion and incorporated sculpture.”
“He doesn’t follow trends, he follows form,” she added. “That’s why his work doesn’t go out of style, but remains timeless.”
Over the years, the fashion house Valentino has continued to develop under the leadership and designs of a new generation, which is still exhibited in Paris today.
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Associated Press writer Amy Seraphim in Paris contributed to this report.