Valentino Garavani, the legendary designer who founded the Italian luxury fashion house Valentino in 1960, has died at the age of 93, his foundation announced Monday. “Valentino Garavani passed away today at his Roman residence, surrounded by his loved ones,” Fondazione Valentino Garavani e Giancarlo Giammetti announced in a post on Instagram, adding that his funeral will take place on Friday, Jan. 23, at a Roman basilica. After launching his fashion house, the designer became widely known for his signature, “Valentino Red,” a vivid color that became a hallmark of his brand, even used for his bulletproof Mercedes. He retired from the fashion house in 2008, two years after a cameo in The Devil Wears Prada. “In Italy, there is the Pope—and there is Valentino,” former mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, told The New Yorker in 2005. Valentino’s designs have been worn by Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who wore a Valentino wedding dress for her marriage to Aristotle Onassis. “It is very, very simple, I try to make my girls look sensational,” Valentino told The New York Times in 2007, with the outlet reporting that, for the designer, everything was “very funny” and “very nice,” and he regarded his clothes as “very beautiful.” Giancarlo Giammetti, 83, the other member of the foundation which announced the death, co-founded the fashion house. He was Valentino’s lover until the early 1970s, when he married a Brazilian socialite. Valentino went on to date one of his house’s models, and traveled everywhere with his pet pugs.
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