Palazzo Mignanelli, Valentino at his atelier, Palazzo Mignanelli in the centre of Rome
In an article for The Telegraph Travel, Italian fashion designer Valentino writes about the city of Rome.
Rome by Valentino
The fashion designer Valentino pays homage to Rome, the Italian city that inspired him.
Valentino Garavani
30 November 2012
'I moved to Rome in 1958. It’s become my city; it’s as if I was born there. I loved it right from the start. One of the things I like most about it is that it’s the perfect passeggiata city — a city you can get the measure of by simply walking around.
Its monuments, its churches, its streets and piazzas and cobbled lanes unroll before you; you’re surrounded by movement and colour. You go to Trastevere and everyone’s talking in broad Roman dialect, as if in a film starring Alberto Sordi about la vecchia Roma. The whole of humanity is here; in the same street you’ll find shopkeepers alongside aristocrats in their grand, crumbling palazzos. This contrast has an incredible charm, and it’s something you don’t find everywhere in Italy.
So I was immediately fascinated by the city. And of course it has a marvellous climate, and a special quality of light. For a fashion designer, Rome is full of inspiration: there’s a special feeling in the light, the colours, the art, the architecture. I don’t know if the warm reds and oranges that we associate with Roman exteriors influenced my famous “rosso Valentino” shade — they may well have done so subconsciously. But one thing that is undeniable is that I’ve always been obsessed by the search for classical beauty. How could it be otherwise, living in a place like Rome?
One thing I love in clothes, and try to reproduce in my work, is sinuosity: by which I mean clothes that caress the body but also move and float with the person who’s wearing them. Rome is full of movement – it’s a very sinuous city. Think of the Roman Baroque: all those curls and curves that you find carved on church facades. If you transport that into a different medium, a lighter medium, you can create marvellous forms.
I’ve always had my main atelier right in the centre of Rome, a stone’s throw from the Spanish Steps. When I arrived from my apprenticeship in Paris, I had a couture house in Via Condotti. When my business partner Giancarlo Giammetti started helping me we moved into an apartment in Via Gregoriana, then a few years later when space got too tight we moved around the corner into the 16th-century Palazzo Mignanelli.
First we took the whole top floor, then the floor below, then the floor below that – until we’d occupied the whole palazzo, which people now call Palazzo Valentino.
I get out and about in Rome less than I used to, but over the 50 years I’ve been there I’ve covered the length and breadth of the city. One street I love is Via Giulia and the lanes and squares that give on to it, like Renaissance-era Piazza Farnese, which is now the French Embassy. It’s such an elegant street, with its aristocratic palazzos and antique shops and boutiques.
Then there are the consular roads of Ancient Rome. My house is on the corner of the Appia Pignatelli and the Appia Antica, which went all the way down to Brindisi. When I moved there, Appia Pignatelli was a country lane; today it’s a busy road encroached on by ugly blocks of flats. But part of the Roman stretch of the Appia Antica is a no-traffic zone, and with its huge, worn paving stones it’s still a fascinating place where you really feel the spirit of Classical Rome. Maybe that’s why Elizabeth Taylor rented a house there when shooting Cleopatra at the Cinecittà film studios. Today it belongs to Franco Zeffirelli; we’re practically next-door neighbours.
I also love the sweeping view of the centro storico from the Gianicolo hill. And of course the Spanish Steps, which are simply extraordinary, with Bernini’s lovely Barcaccia fountain at the bottom.
I suppose all the places I’ve mentioned are very scenographic, sets just waiting for their actors. Which is why the haute couture fashion shows I organised for three years running on the Spanish Steps and in Piazza Mignanelli were so right for the location. The whole area between Via del Babuino and the Spanish Steps was packed with people; there were cameras swooping around on cranes, beautiful girls were making their entrances from piazza doors and gliding up and down the steps. I was proud to give this to Rome. If you think of those Baroque pageants they used to put on in Roman piazzas, it’s not that different.
But the show to end all shows was in 2007 for the 45th anniversary of my life in fashion. The mayor of Rome allowed us to use the Temple of Venus in the Forum, which is usually off limits to everyone but the Pope, who addresses the crowds from there during the Easter Via Crucis procession.
There were fireworks over the Colosseum and an aerial ballet. Dante Ferretti, who has won three Oscars for his production design, did the lighting, and helped build a Chinese pavilion in the Borghese Gardens for a dinner for 700 people. And we staged an unforgettable show in the old pilgrim hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia, near the Vatican. The three-day extravaganza was my thank-you to the city; I wanted to give something back.
One of my favourite Roman restaurants – a real classic – is Al Moro, near the Trevi Fountain. It was one of Fellini’s favourite places to eat, too; he even gave the former owner a walk-on part in one of his films. I’m not a huge restaurant person – I’m just as happy eating at home or with friends – but when I do go I love these old-fashioned Roman restaurants with old-fashioned service; two others in the same style are Dal Bolognese in Piazza del Popolo and Nino in Via Borgognona, which is just along the road from my atelier.
Romans have always been happy-go-lucky types, good talkers, good eaters and drinkers. They’re more stressed than they used to be – but this is a worldwide thing. At heart, Rome is a vibrant, happy place.'
