Valentino Women's Fashion Brand

Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani, best known as Valentino, is an Italian fashion designer and founder of the Valentino SpA brand and company. His main lines include Valentino, Valentino Garavani, Valentino Roma, and R.E.D. Valentino - four labels a women's shopper will meet under one maison name, running from the main collection to the R.E.D. Valentino line, and that is the full line list.

The company record behind the lines is a founder's record. Valentino SpA is a clothing company founded in 1960 by Valentino Garavani. Valentino's international debut took place in 1962 in Florence, the Italian fashion capital of the time, and the house he built dressed a particular kind of occasion: Valentino has also specially designed wedding dresses for Elizabeth Taylor, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lopez, Courtney Cox, Sophie Hunter and Princess Madeleine of Sweden - a celebrity bridal list that explains why the name sits in this directory's designer wing rather than its high-street one.

Mayhoola, and the Creative Director Succession

Ownership changed in the 2010s, in one chain: Valentino SpA is part of Valentino Fashion Group, which in turn is owned by the State of Qatar through Mayhoola for Investments S.P.C. In 2012, Qatar acquired Valentino for 700 million euros through that investment vehicle. For a researcher, that chain is the fact to carry away - a 1960 Italian founding, a fashion group in the middle, and Qatari ownership at the top since a 2012 purchase at a stated price.

The design succession is recorded at the same precision. In September 2007, Valentino decided to leave the Creative Direction of his brand. Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli were first nominated Creative Directors of all accessories lines, and the following year they were appointed Creative Directors of Valentino, guiding all collections from Prêt-à-Porter to Haute Couture. On 7 July 2016 Maison Valentino nominated Pierpaolo Piccioli its sole Creative Director. So a women's piece can be dated by its direction in three eras: the founder's own hand to 2007, the Chiuri-Piccioli partnership, and Piccioli alone from July 2016.

Researching the Women's Lines

Check the latest apparel and accessories collections for women on the brand's own site, carried in this page's References. On Apparel Search itself, the profile's links to the women's fashion brand pages and the Fashion Designer Directory are carried here as well, so the route from this luxury profile back to the wider directory stays one click away. Among this letter's V brands, Valentino is the couture pole: Versace is its Italian contemporary, Vera Wang its bridal counterpart across the Atlantic, and the distance between a Valentino gown and a Vans sneaker further down this same letter is the whole range of the women's directory in miniature.

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