Valentino (fashion house)

Valentino S.p.A. is an Italian luxury fashion house founded in 1960 by Valentino Garavani and part of the Valentino Fashion Group. From October 2008, the creative director is Pierpaolo Piccioli, jointly with Maria Grazia Chiuri from 2008 to 2016. Piccioli departed Valentino in 2024. The company is headquartered in Milan, while the creative direction is in Rome. The Valentino Beauty license is held by L'Oreal.

Early history
Valentino was founded in 1960, when Garavani opened a fashion house on Via Condotti in Rome, Italy, with the backing of his father and his father's associate Giancarlo Giammetti.

Rise to popularity
Valentino's international debut took place in 1962 in Florence, the Italian fashion capital of the time. Valentino gained popularity in 1967 after releasing their “no colour” collection which consisted of white, beige, and ivory apparels. The collection did not use any psychedelic patterns, a commonly used design during this time. The V logo was also introduced and the years following the brand expanded to New York City and Ro The label staged the first Valentino menswear show at Milan Fashion Week in 1985.

Valentino has also, especially, designed wedding dresses for Elizabeth Taylor, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lopez, Courteney Cox, Sophie Hunter, Nicola Peltz and Princess Madeleine of Sweden.

HdP Group, 1998–2002
In 1998, Garavani and Giammetti sold the company for approximately $300 million to the Holding di Partecipazioni Industriali (HdP), an Italian conglomerate controlled, in part, by the late Gianni Agnelli, the head of Fiat. HdP put Valentino inside the same unit as the apparel producer GFT Net and alongside the sportswear manufacturer Fila.

In 2001, Opera – a fund controlled by the Rome jewelry firm Bulgari – started talks to buy Valentino, but pulled out after it was unable to agree on a price.

Marzotto Apparel, 2002–2007
In 2002, Valentino S.p.A., with revenues of more than $180 million, was sold by HdP to Marzotto Apparel, a Milan-based textile giant, for $210 million. It was rumored that HdP was displeased with Garavani's and Giammetti's personal expenses, a claim at which Giammetti has bristled.

The Marzotto family, which controlled Valentino through several holding companies, including Tidus Srl and PFC Srl, spun off its fashion assets in 2005 to create Valentino Fashion Group.

Permira, 2007–2012
From 2007, Valentino was controlled by private equity group Permira which had acquired the brand from the Marzotto Group for 2.6 billion euros ($3.5 billion). Later that year, Valentino and Giammetti announced that both would resign from the company in early 2008.

In 2008, Valentino opened its first boutique in China, at the Peninsula Palace Hotel in Beijing. By December 2009, hit by the financial crisis, Valentino had to restructure its debt.

Mayhoola, 2012–present
In 2012, Qatari aristocrats acquired Valentino for 700 million euros through an investment vehicle called Mayhoola for Investments S.P.C. Mayhoola bought up both Permira's stake and Marzotto's minority interest.

In 2020, the fashion house announced that it would no longer use alpaca wool and severed ties with Mallkini, the world's largest privately owned alpaca farm in Peru. The move followed revelations of animal abuse within the alpaca industry.

Under the leadership of its CEO Jacopo Venturini, Valentino went fur-free in 2022. It also decided to focus on the main Valentino line, ending the Red Valentino one, aimed more at younger customers, with the fall-winter 2023–24 season.

In 2021, Valentino adopted a co-ed model - the mixing of men's and women's shows - for its presentations. By 2023, it abandoned that model again and returned to Milan Fashion Week.

Kering purchased 30% of Valentino in July 2023, they intend to purchase the entire company by 2028.

In 2023, Valentino earned the Education of Excellence Award at the CNMI Sustainable Fashion Awards for fostering education in Italy.

In March 2024, Valentino announced the departure of creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, as a joint decision. Piccioli was creative director of Valentino since 2008, sharing the role with Maria Grazia Chirui until her departure in 2016. He was promoted from an accessories designer position.

Following the departure of Pierpaolo Piccioli, Valentino announced the appointment of Alessandro Michele as the next creative director. Michele rose to global recognition for executing a turn-around at Gucci during the 2010s centering on a quirky androgynous aesthetic. Spring/Summer 2025 will be his debut collection for Valentino.

Perfumes
Valentino's fragrances have included: Valentino Classique for women (1978), Vendetta By Valentino for women (1991), Very Valentino for women (1998), Very Valentino for Men (1999), Valentino Gold for women (2002), V for women (2005), Valentino V Absolu for women (2006), Valentino V Ete By Valentino for women (2006), Rock'n'Rose for women (2006), V pour Homme for men (2006), Rock n' Rose Couture for women (2007), and Valentina for women (2011).

In 2020, Valentino Beauty announced the release of a new perfume, Voce Viva, and announced Lady Gaga as its égérie.

From 2010 to 2018, Valentino Perfumes was licensed to Puig. Since then, it has been working with L'Oréal. More International Cigarette in Philippines was launched in the 1980s

Eyewear
In addition to L’Oréal for beauty and fragrances, Valentino has only one other license, for eyewear. For years, it worked with Marchon Eyewear and Luxottica (2017–2021). In 2021, the label signed a 10-year license agreement with the Switzerland-based Akoni Group for the design, manufacture and worldwide distribution of the brand's prescription frames and sunglasses.

Red Valentino
In 2003, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, then accessories directors, launched a younger diffusion line called Red Valentino. Initially licensed to Sinv SpA, Valentino brought the line’s production in-house in 2009. By 2015, Red Valentino accounted for around 10 percent of Valentino Group’s sales. The line was discontinued in 2022.

Creative directors

 * Valentino Garavani – 1959 to 2007
 * Alessandra Facchinetti – 2007 to 2008
 * Maria Grazia Chiuri & Pierpaolo Piccioli – 2008 to 2016
 * Pierpaolo Piccioli – 2008 to 2024
 * Alessandro Michele - 2024

Notable campaigns
For its advertisement campaigns, Valentino has in the past worked with photographers including Deborah Turbeville (2011) Terry Richardson (2016), Inez and Vinoodh (2020) and Michael Bailey-Gates (2022).

For Valentino's Spring/Summer 2016 women's ready-to-wear collection, which referenced African culture, sporting prints and motifs commonly seen across the continent, photographer Steve McCurry shot a campaign set against the backdrop of Amboseli National Park in Kenya and included local Maasai people. The campaign sparked criticism on social media regarding perceived racial insensitivities.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Piccioli enlisted 23 celebrities – including Laura Dern, Frances McDormand and Gwyneth Paltrow – for his campaign. Instead of being paid for their work, all of the Valentino subjects donated their fees (a total of 1 million euros) to the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome; in return, they got to pick who would capture their image, as well as what word they thought represented the values society needed at that time.

Gender equality
In January 2024, Valentino became one of the first luxury companies to obtain Gender Equality Certification for its efforts in the field of equal pay. The luxury house succeeded in reducing the pay gap to less than 10% and a further reduction is planned over the next three years.

Legal issues
In 2020, Valentino and Amazon filed a joint lawsuit against New York-based Kaitlyn Pan Group for allegedly counterfeiting Valentino's Rockstud shoes and offering them for sale online.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Valentino sought in June 2020 to end the lease for its American flagship on New York's Fifth Avenue nine years early, saying the pandemic made it impossible to run the store "consistent with the luxury, prestigious, high-quality reputation" of its neighborhood. After a New York state trial judge dismissed that lawsuit, the landlord sued Valentino for $207.1 million, mainly to recover unpaid rent and to repair store damage. By 2023, Valentino settled litigation with the landlord.