Valentino

About the house

Valentino Garavani opened his fashion house in Rome on the Via Condotti. Sources differ on the year, with accounts giving 1957, 1959 and 1960. He met Giancarlo Giammetti, then an architecture student, at a Rome café in 1960, and Giammetti left his studies to become his business partner. The house moved into its headquarters at Palazzo Gabrielli-Mignanelli in 1967, the year of the all-white collection that introduced the V logo.

Garavani and Giammetti sold the company to HdP in 1998 for about $300 million, and HdP passed it to Marzotto in 2002 for $210 million. Permira bought it in 2007 for a reported 2.6 billion euros. Qatar-based Mayhoola for Investments took over in July 2012. In July 2023 Kering agreed to buy 30% of Valentino for 1.7 billion euros, with an option on 100% by the end of 2028, while Mayhoola keeps the majority.

Garavani retired in 2007, Alessandra Facchinetti followed him, and from 2008 Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli ran the house together. Piccioli then led alone until 2024. Alessandro Michele was named creative director in March 2024 and started on 2 April, with spring/summer 2025 as his first collection. Garavani himself died in Rome on 19 January 2026, aged 93.

One perfume-history timeline dates the first scent to 1979 and calls it Valentino Red. The licence passed from Unilever to Procter & Gamble in 2005, and then to Puig. Valentino Donna reached Europe in autumn 2015; Nuvo magazine credits perfumers Sonia Constant and Antoine Maisondieu with it, and quotes one of them saying the aim was to modernize the rose and make it more gourmand.

L'Oréal and Valentino announced a worldwide licence for fine fragrance and luxury beauty on 28 May 2018, effective 1 January 2019. Born in Roma, for him and for her, arrived in 2019 as the first fragrances of that arrangement. Cosmetics Business reports that the campaign was shot by Inez and Vinoodh and directed by Harmony Korine.