MerkItalian
Valentino
3 actieve items
Valentino Garavani grew up in Voghera, Lombardy, and left for Paris as a teenager to study at the Beaux-Arts and the École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. He apprenticed under Jean Dessès and Guy Laroche before returning to Italy in the late 1950s. On 11 May 1960, he opened his atelier on Via Condotti in Rome, supported by his father and architect Giancarlo Giammetti, whom he had met the previous summer at the Café de Paris on the Via Veneto. That meeting marked the beginning of a professional partnership that would define the house for decades.
The maison's international debut at the Pitti Palace in Florence in 1962 brought immediate attention. Within years, the house had dressed figures including Jacqueline Kennedy, notably for her 1968 wedding to Aristotle Onassis, and a long roster of European royalty and film stars. The signature shade, Rosso Valentino, entered the fashion lexicon as shorthand for a particular kind of theatrical, unapologetically beautiful red. The 1967 "no colour" collection in white, ivory, and beige offered a counterpoint and demonstrated the designer's range. That same year, the maison moved its headquarters to Palazzo Gabrielli-Mignanelli in Rome, and Garavani received the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award.
Valentino Garavani retired in 2008, handing creative direction to Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, the accessories designers who had joined the house in 1999 and launched the Red Valentino diffusion line in 2003. Together they modernised the couture vocabulary and introduced the Rockstud line, pyramid-shaped metal studs applied to shoes, bags, and belts, which became a defining commercial product of the early 2010s and drove annual revenue past one billion euros by 2015. When Chiuri departed for Dior in 2016, Piccioli continued alone, steering the house toward monochrome maximalism and a more progressive public stance. He left in March 2024, and Alessandro Michele, the former Gucci creative director, was named as successor.
On the Nordic secondary market, Valentino accessories appear steadily across Danish and Scandinavian auction houses. The auction data covers 79 items, with the strongest results from Kaplans in Stockholm (16 lots), Bruun Rasmussen Lyngby (12 lots), and Stockholms Auktionsverk Helsinki (10 lots). The category breakdown reflects the brand's accessory dominance: miscellaneous fashion items account for 60 lots, followed by shoes and bracelets. Top recorded prices include a Rockstud Spike bag at 12,000 DKK and a Garavani Rockstud handbag at 5,200 SEK. Pre-owned Rockstud pieces in good condition consistently attract interest, reflecting the line's sustained recognition among buyers who follow the secondary luxury market.