Everything about Valentino Spa totally explained
Valentino SpA is a clothing company founded in 1959 by
Valentino Garavani. Garavani retired in January 2008, leaving
Alessandra Facchinetti as creative director.
History
Early history
Valentino was founded in 1959 when Garavani opened a sumptuous fashion house on
Via Condotti in
Rome, Italy with the backing of his father and his father's associate.
The entrepreneurial skill of
Giancarlo Giammetti, Garavani's business partner and longtime boyfriend, proved fundamental to the worldwide expansion and success of Valentino. When Giammetti arrived, Valentino was in poor financial condition: Garavani's father's associate had pulled out of the business, and the business was nearly bankrupt. Valentino already had a passion for luxury and would spend too much money on expensive fabrics never thinking about the financial aspects of his fashion business. Thanks to Giammetti, Garavani was able to focus on the creative aspect of design leaving all business intricacies to Giammetti.
Garavani and Giammetti later started a new company. Under Giammetti's wing Valentino business got under control and things were ready for international success.
Rise to popularity
Valentino's international debut took place in 1962 in Florence, the Italian fashion capital of the time. Valentino's first show at the
Pitti Palace was welcomed as a true revelation and the young couturier was submerged by orders from foreign buyers and enthusiastic comments on the press. After the breakthrough show in Florence, Garavani started to dress the ladies of the international best-dressed crowd such as his acquaintance from the Paris years Countess
Jacqueline de Ribes and New York socialites
Babe Paley and
Jayne Wrightsman. In 1966, confident of his client base, he moved his shows from Florence to Rome and there, two years later, he'd one of his greatest triumphs, an all-white collection, which became famous for the "V" logo he designed. By the mid-1960s he was already considered the undisputed maestro of Italian Couture, receiving in 1967 the Neiman Marcus Award, the equivalent of an Oscar in the field of fashion. The
Begum Aga Khan,
Farah Diba,
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,
Elizabeth Taylor,
Marella Agnelli and
Princess Margaret were already customers as well as personal friends.
Throughout the 1970s Garavani spent considerable time in New York City where his presence was embraced by social personalities such as Vogue's editor-in-chief
Diana Vreeland and art identities such as
Andy Warhol.
From HDP group to Marzotto group
In 1998 Garavani and Giammetti sold the company for approximately $300 million to
HdP, an Italian conglomerate controlled, in part, by the late
Gianni Agnelli, the head of
Fiat. In 2002, Valentino S.p.A., with revenues of more than $180 million, was sold by HdP to
Marzotto Apparel, a Milan-based textile giant, for $210 million. It was rumored that HDP was displeased with Garavani's and Giammetti's personal expenses, a claim Giammetti has bristled at.
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Further Information
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