Since 1960, the house of Valentino has been a beacon of glamour, bathing its best-dressed clientele in the most scintillating of lights. From the start, its founder, Valentino Garavani, has worked by one simple precept: “I know what women want,” he once said. “They want to be beautiful.”[1]
Growing up in provincial Voghera, Italy, young Valentino loved going to the movies. There, in the darkened cinema, he would enter a realm of otherworldly elegance. Valentino was in the thrall of the glittering goddesses of the silver screen. One film in particular, Ziegfeld Girl, left him with a lust for the beautiful life. “For me, a young guy of 13, to see this sort of beauty—I think from that moment I decide I want to create clothes for ladies,”[2] he later said. Fortunately, the blue-eyed dreamer had an abundance of talent. He set out from Voghera, little imagining he would one day rival the Pope for popularity in Rome.