Estate of Mind

A sprawling palazzo in the Eternal City has been both home and office to Giancarlo Giammetti for decades, during and after his romance to his lifelong business partner, Valentino Garavani. The business half of the iconic house opens his doors to VF

- By JAMES REGINATO Photographs by SIMON WATSON

IT BEGAN ON the Via Veneto, July 31, 1960. On a warm Sunday night, the paparazzi were prowling the cafés, waiting to snap a screen goddess or perhaps a dowager principessa—the scene Federico Fellini immortalized when La Dolce Vita was released earlier that year.

Giancarlo Giammetti was an unlikely player in this decadent Roman mix. The 18-year-old architecture student’s father owned an electronics store. But the shop was a block from the fashionable Café de Paris, which gave the elder Giammetti as well as his son privileges to a regular table.

Giancarlo was ensconced in his seat when Valentino Garavani walked in. The 28-year-old Northern Italian already had a worldly air, having apprenticed in Paris with Jean Dessès, couturier to the Greek court and European nobility. Newly arrived in Rome, Garavani was launching his own label. He was “incredibly seductive, with his deep tan, blue eyes, and soft but intense way of speaking,” Giammetti wrote in his 2013 Assouline book, Private: Giancarlo Giammetti.

“Where can I find you?” Giammetti asked after a short chat.

“Via Condotti, undici,” Garavani replied, giving Giammetti the address of a baroque 16th-century palazzo where he had rented the second-floor apartment to present his first collection. The year before, on a makeshift runway in a frescoed salon, he’d sent out 110 looks. Among them was an hourglass-shaped cocktail dress of draped tulle bright as a poppy. The first dress Valentino ever produced in red, it was so delightful he gave it a name: Fiesta.