Valentino Garavani, fashion's 'last emperor', dies at 93

Valentino Garavani, the last of the great 20th-century couturiers and a designer who defined the image of royalty in a republican age for all manner of princesses—crowned, deposed, Hollywood and society—died on Monday at his home in Rome.

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He was 93.His death was announced in a statement by his foundation.

Dubbed “the last emperor” in a documentary film of the same name released in 2008, and “the Sheik of chic” by John Fairchild, the former editor of Women’s Wear Daily, Garavani founded his namesake company in 1959. For the next half-century, he not only dressed a world of grandees but also became their equal, with his own palaces, movable court and signature shade of red.

“in Italy, there is the Pope —and there is Valentino,” said Walter Veltroni, then the mayor of Rome, ina 2005 profile of the designer in The New Yorker.

Perpetually tanned, his hair blow-dried to immobile perfection, almost always referred to by his first name (or by the honorific “Mr. Valentino”) and trailed by a retinue of people and pugs, Garavani created and sold an image of high glamour that helped define Italian style for generations.

“T always look for beauty, beauty,” he told the broadcaster Charlie Rose in an interview in 2009. He was not the designer-as-tortured-artist, but rather the designer-as-disciplined-bon-vivant. He didn’t care about setting trends or channeling the zeitgeist or being on the cutting edge.

“It is very, very simple,” he told The New York Times in 2007. “I try to make my girls look sensational.”