Valentino: 'Finito is finito'

From Jackie O to J.Lo, Valentino has dressed them all. Now, in his first interview since hanging up his scissors for good, he talks to Roya Nikkhah about his celebrity clientele - and why models can never be too skinny

For more than 45 years he has dressed them all: princesses and first ladies; Hollywood royalty and rock stars. So when the Italian couturier Valentino bid a final farewell to the catwalk on Wednesday, the front row at the Musée Rodin in Paris encapsulated his clientele with filmstars (Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu), designers (Miuccia Prada and Philip Treacy) and a smattering of European royals.

The following day and Mr Valentino, as he is known, is taking it all in. Sitting in his sumptuous office overlooking the Place Vendôme, wearing an immaculately cut grey flannel suit accessorised with his trademark teak tan, he has just returned from a morning with the mayor of Paris, who presented him with a medal of honour for his services to fashion.

It must be an emotional time for him, I say. "Oh my gosh, yes. Last night I couldn't sleep because I was so excited. I was really touched by everybody, all my friends, all the movie stars, all the royals coming to see me. It was very beautiful."

Now 75, and after decades of dressing celebrities, Valentino is a superstar in his own right.

"This week, women were stopping me in the restaurant at the Ritz, ladies screaming, 'You are crazy to leave, we want you to stay!' Am I sad to be retiring? Well, just a tiny bit, but I realise it's the right time to go."

Valentino's designs have long played a sartorial role on the world stage. When the Empress of Iran, Farah Diba, fled her country in 1979 in the wake of the Islamic revolution, she did so in a Valentino beige wool coat with a sable collar. Bernadette Chirac chose Valentino for the day her husband became president of France, while Julia Roberts and Cate Blanchett both accepted Oscars wearing his gowns.

But it was the world's most famous widow who transformed him into a household name. After President Kennedy was killed in 1963, Jackie Kennedy asked Valentino to make her wardrobe as she came out of mourning. Four years later, she married Aristotle Onassis in another Valentino creation, a lace and georgette mini-dress.

"Jackie made me famous around the world," he says now. "She was the first true fashion icon. The thing about Jackie was that she didn't try too hard. Just wore simple trousers, shirts and raincoats, with big sunglasses. It was effortless.

"Many people, they try and try to be trendy, but sometimes, my God, they are too much, too fashion. Jackie never tried to be fashion."

It is a philosophy that befits Valentino's designs. Rather than chasing fleeting fads, he is known for timeless elegance, a classiness that starlets so often crave. When Jennifer Lopez, the queen of bling, married for the second time, it was Valentino she turned to for a make-over.

"I remember, it was summertime, I was on my boat, and I got a call from Jennifer," he recalls. "She said, 'Valentino, I want to look like a princess.' And she did."

Valentino Garavani was born close to Milan and raised in Rome. At 17, he moved to Paris to study couture, apprenticing in the ateliers of Guy Laroche and Jean Desses, two of the biggest names of the day, before returning to Italy to open a fashion house with the financial help of his father, an electrical wholesaler.

With film directors Fellini, Visconti and Antonioni in full swing, Rome had become known as "Hollywood-on-Tiber", and soon Valentino was dressing Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Audrey Hepburn.

He fondly remembers this golden age of glamour. "The movie stars were obliged not to go out of the door in slacks, or a running outfit, because they had to have a sensational image for the masses. Now we see them running, sweating, and they don't know what elegance is."

It was in Rome in 1960 that Valentino met Giancarlo Giammetti. Then an architecture student, Giammetti became his business partner and lover (they have since separated), and is widely credited with transforming the House of Valentino from a couture-only operation into a global brand with an estimated profit of more than £160 million.

In 1998, they sold their company to HdP, the publishers of the Corriere della Sera newspaper, for more than £150 million, with Valentino retaining creative control of the business.

Those millions have been well spent. Even in the famously flamboyant world of fashion, Valentino is renowned for his decadence: private jets, a 130ft yacht, an art collection stuffed full of Picassos, Warhols and Chagalls, and a permanent entourage that travels the world with him, which invariably includes his six pet pugs.

And then there are the houses: a villa outside Rome, a Manhattan apartment, a mansion in Holland Park, a chalet in Gstaad, and Wideville, a 17th-century château near Paris.

For someone whose maids iron his sheets twice a day - once after washing and once on the bed - it is perhaps surprising that his bête noire is the excess of the Eighties.

"It was too much, the shoulder pads, the hair everywhere. It was a very vulgar moment for fashion."

British women, however, have his approval. "They are better dressed than they used to be. I went to lots of parties in London last year and British women are making an effort. The young girls, especially, are very well dressed."

And their mothers? "They are more traditional. They like their comfortable shoes. They are in the country and they take the car and come to London dressed the same. Oh my God! But this is England, it is traditional in your country."

Still, he believes the British have spent too long obsessing over the "size zero" model debate. "My dear, what can I tell you?" he sighs. "For a designer, models are never too thin, because when you have to present something in the right way, you are not obliged to see a full woman.

"It is like when a painter has an exhibition, the walls have to be white and perfect. For designers, when we present something, we don't want to be worried about proportion because the girl is too big or too fat."

Before heading off to the Rio Carnival to begin retirement in a fittingly flamboyant manner, Mr Valentino will hand over his empire to Alessandra Facchinetti, the former head designer at Gucci.

Surely he will miss the glamour, the celebrities, the Oscar nights?

"I don't know yet," he says, shrugging his shoulders. "You know, all my life I've been a designer, and I've loved my job, but after coming home from work I never continue talking about fashion. I have lots of friends and lots of other things to do."

So he won't be sneaking back to oversee the wedding dress of a princess or ensure the hem of a star's gown is just so?

"No, no, no!" he says, rising to his feet and brushing his palms together. "Finito is finito. I want to leave while the room is still crowded."