Credits: Alessandra Brunhildmedia / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 4.0.
The great Italian couturier Valentino Garavani, icon of Italian haute couture, died on January 19, 2026, in Rome, at the age of 93. The Valentino Garavani Foundation and Giancarlo Giammetti announced a peaceful passing at the designer’s Roman home, “surrounded by the affection of his loved ones.” A public lying-in-state will be held on January 21 and 22, 2026, at PM23, at 23 Piazza Mignanelli. The funeral will take place on January 23, 2026 at 11:00 AM, at the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, followed by a burial announced at the Flaminio cemetery in Rome.
Funerals In Rome: The Ceremony And The Silence
Rome has the art of farewells without chatter. The chosen basilica, backed by the Baths of Diocletian, extends Valentino’s very idea: a beauty that holds because it is built. The statement does not specify the cause of death. This discretion, in a time that demands explanations, resembles a final clean cut.
The two days of lying-in-state at PM23 also say something about his era. This venue, set at 23 Piazza Mignanelli, near the Spanish Steps, was conceived as a cultural jewel box. The choice is not only practical. It expresses an ambition: to move fashion from mere clothing to memory. Moreover, it seeks to inscribe a name into the city. It’s like signing the underside of a jacket.
Tributes to Valentino poured in. The world of fashion and luxury remembered a man who gave Made in Italy a global aura. In this Europe of brands, where Bernard Arnault at the head of LVMH and François-Henri Pinault atop Kering embody industrial power, Valentino occupied a different, almost sacerdotal place. The National Chamber of Italian Fashion, chaired by Carlo Capasa, joined the farewell.
The Young Man Who Wanted The Sublime
Born in 1932 in Voghera, Valentino left very early for Paris. There he learned workshop discipline, the art of line, the respect for time. He then returned and chose Rome. Not Milan, the capital of business and industrial pace. Rome, the city that knows how to make style a civilization.
In 1960, he founded his house, then met Giancarlo Giammetti, companion and partner. That meeting shaped everything. Valentino thought as a creator. Giammetti thought as a builder. One designs, the other protects. Together, they set up a durable mechanism, rare in a milieu where glamour is often paid for with instability.
In the atelier, Valentino refused approximation. The drape must appear natural precisely because it is not. The hem must disappear. The cut must flatter without flattery. The documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor showed this laboratory of glamour: meticulous gestures, a muted tension, and the certainty that elegance is not a mood, but a craft.
When he decided to step back, in 2007 then officially in January 2008, he did so as he had lived: as a scenographer. The final show, in the memory of the guests, ends on a red finale. Thus, it was as if the couturier closed his century with his color. This voluntary departure, rare in an industry that clings on, reinforced the legend: Valentino not only knew how to create, he knew how to leave the stage.
The Red, The Stars And The Image
Valentino has often been summed up as Valentino red. The shorthand is not wrong. It signals a ceremonial color, a contained warmth, a desire that stands upright. But the true signature was elsewhere: in his understanding of image. Valentino knew that couture only fully exists when it meets a light, a frame, an apparition.
In the 1960s, Rome beat to the rhythm of Cinecittà. Valentino, near the Spanish Steps, became a couturier of the era as much as of bodies. The international shift solidified with Jacqueline Kennedy, then with a long list of celebrities. He did not merely clothe. He fashioned a silhouette that served as a scenario, and whose trace remains. Even his brief appearance in The Devil Wears Prada reminds us that some names move from the salon into common culture.
We then measure what he changed. Before him, Italy’s couture was admired, but often seen as peripheral to Paris. Valentino shifted the center. He conferred on Rome a couture authority, classical and spectacular. Thus, it could travel to New York and Hollywood without losing its accent.
The Discipline Of Beauty
Valentino defended elegance as a rule. In a century that saw fashion accelerate, flail, and theorize, he held a course. His classicism was never a lack of ideas. It was a fidelity to the cut.
His ateliers operated like a chapel. People spoke softly. They altered. They restarted. Then came the evidence, that miracle of haute couture: giving the impression that everything is simple.
This requirement had a flip side: it could seem ruthless. Valentino never claimed to be a revolutionary. He preferred the authority of beauty to the intoxication of the new. He loved splendor, but hated showmanship. He collected art, but distrusted overly conceptual fashion. These contradictions, far from weakening him, made him Roman.
A Proper Name Turned Empire
The Valentino house, now a global company, extends the empire. The brand remains controlled by the principal shareholder Mayhoola, alongside Kering, which has held 30% of the capital since 2023. An amended agreement in September 2025 states that the structure should not change before 2028 at the earliest. This reality does not detract from the couturier. It simply recalls that behind an empire there was first an eye, a hand, an obstinacy.
Valentino felt this fragile link early. He sold, he handed over, he left the stage. He could have clung to it. He chose to depart as master after a final salute in the mid-2000s. Thus, he left the house to continue without him.
Tribute To Valentino: The Heritage, Without Imitation
Valentino had long left the runways. The house continues, now under the artistic direction of Alessandro Michele, appointed in March 2024. The symbolism is clear: remain in Rome, where it all began, but without fetishism. The heritage is not repeated. It is translated.
The Foundation created with Giammetti and its PM23 extends this gesture: moving couture toward art, memory, and transmission. On January 23, 2026, gazes will rise in the basilica. And perhaps a flash of red, in each person’s imagination, will still do its work. Not to create spectacle. To remind that a certain luxury knew how to speak softly.
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