Valentino Garavani became interested in fashion while in middle school and at age 17 he moved to Paris to pursue this interest. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. He turned back to Rome in the beginning of the 1960s and started his own fashion house At the end of the 1960s Valentino meets Giancarlo Giammetti, an architecture student who abandons the university to become his business partner. Giammetti's entrepreneurial genius will prove fundamental to the worldwide expansion and success of the House.Valentino's international debut took place in 1962 in Florence, the Italian fashion capital of the time.

His first show at the Pitti Palace was welcomed as a true revelation and the young couturier was submerged by orders from foreign buyers and enthusiastic comments on the press. In 1967, he premiered the Valentino White Collection, which became famous for the "V" logo he designed. He designed the white dress that Jacqueline Kennedy wore to her wedding with Aristotle Onassis. He currently designs menswear and womenswear and has his own perfume.In 1998 Valentino and his partner Giancarlo Giammetti sold their empire to the Marzotto Group, but Valentino is still designing all the collections and his clothes can be seen on the most sophisticated and elegant women in the world, from Nicole Kidman to Gwyneth Paltrow to Halle Berry, without forgetting many royal princesses such as Maxima of the Netherlands, Mette Merit of Norway and Marie Chantal of Greece.