Paris Fashion Week menswear opened Tuesday with industry figures and guests mourning the death of designer Valentino Garavani, whose career spanned decades and linked Rome and Paris couture.
Valentino, 93, died at his Rome residence, his foundation said in a statement announcing his death.
The outpouring of grief shaped the start of the week in Paris, where front-row guests and industry figures were among those paying their respects after news of the Italian designer’s passing. In a live context connected to the memorial, Valentino was also described as lying in state at his foundation’s headquarters in Rome.
While he built his house in Rome, the report said Valentino spent decades presenting collections in France, and it noted that his working life was closely intertwined with Paris runways.
Pierre Groppo, fashion editor-in-chief at Vanity Fair France, said of Valentino: “was one of the last big couturiers who really embodied what was fashion in the 20th century.” Groppo said the codes that made Valentino instantly recognizable included “the dots, the ruffles, the knots,” and he added that a generation of designers, “in a way, invented what is celebrity culture.”
On a day meant to sell the future, Groppo and others described looking back instead at what fashion has lost, with Valentino’s approach framed as a model for how couturiers became institutions. In the report, Groppo also recalled Valentino as “very much more than a fashion brand,” adding: “It was a lifestyle.”
The report said Valentino’s vision was built around a simple idea: make women look luminous, then make the moment unforgettable. It said he dressed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor and helped cement his signature “Valentino red” in the public imagination through his decades-long partnership with Giancarlo Giammetti, which also turned the designer himself into part of the spectacle.
Other attendees tied the mourning to what Valentino represented across generations of designers. Prominent fashion writer Luke Leitch framed the loss in outsized terms, calling Valentino “the last of the fashion ‘leviathans of that generation’,” and saying it was “absolutely” the end of a certain class of designer whose authority came from permanence rather than viral speed.
Several observers described Valentino’s restraint and sense of structure, including Arfan Ghani, who pointed to what he said Valentino represented to younger designers. Ghani said Valentino’s materials were “very classical” and that the brand “wasn’t as loud as a lot of other of these brands are with branding.”
Ranti Bam described Valentino through form rather than trend, saying, “As a sculptor I saw Valentino as an artist,” and that he “transcended fashion into sculpture.” Bam also said: “He didn’t follow trends, he pursued form,” adding: “That’s why his work doesn’t date, it endures.”
Outside the fashion industry, attendees described Valentino’s influence as social and cultural. Guy-Claude Agboton, deputy editor of Ideat magazine, said, “There are some people who want to be Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel. … There are also people who are spontaneously Valentino,” and added: “It’s a question of identity.” Benedict Epinay said it was “so moving because we knew at that time it was the last show,” and that he was “lucky enough to attend the last show he gave.”
The report also said Valentino’s house has continued under new leadership and design and remains showcased in Paris, even as Tuesday’s shows unfolded with a sense of an era passing—an idea that one attendee, Lolo Zhang, expressed by saying, “The old era just passed by.”