Valentino

Valentino

If it is red, elegant, and worn by a famous woman, it may also wear the fashion label of Valentino. Since the early 1960s, the Valentino label has signified grace, style, and luxurious living. From the bright red signature shade known as Valentino Red to stark black and white, these glamorous gowns have been the fashion statement for some of society's best-known figures, from film stars Elizabeth Taylor and Julia Roberts to English model Liz Hurley and Monaco's Princess Grace.

The designer is Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani, born in northern Italy in 1932. He became interested in fashion while still a schoolboy, and after a move to Paris, he opened a fashion house in Rome in 1959. By the mid-1960s, he was becoming well known in the upscale fashion world. Some of society's most prominent and stylish women wore - and still wear - his romantic, youthful-looking gowns. Perhaps his most famous design was the white dress worn by Jacqueline Kennedy when she married Aristotle Onassis in 1968. Elegant ball gowns are not his only designs, however. His styles include, among others, a plaid knitted sweater with a skirt of chiffon or a silk dress that looks like a T-shirt and has diamonds on the sleeves.

Valentino sold his company in 1998 and retired from the fashion scene in 2009. That January, his last haute couture show took place in Paris. Many of the well-known models who had worked with him through the years, such as Naomi Campbell, returned to Paris for his fashion farewell.