May 11th, 1932- Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani. I always have a hard time getting around the notion of why it would be difficult to come out of the closet if you were a successful fashion designer. It is similar to denying being gay as a chorus boy, event planner or professional figure skater.
It’s no surprise that of the many great gay fashion designers to have chosen to be open about their gayness in recent years: Versace, Tom Ford, Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani, it would be Valentino who would be the last to come out of that closet. I suppose being on the leading edge has never been the style of the designer who burst on the fashion scene in 1959 & quickly established himself as the favorite of the ladies who lunch.
The “secret that is not a secret”, is what Valentino’s partner in business & in life for 50 years, Giancarlo Giammetti, called it, in a feature on the designer published in Vanity Fair in 2004. In July 1960, Valentino met young Giammetti at the Café de Paris in Rome & they have rarely been apart since. Giammetti claims if you added up the days they have spent apart since meeting, it amounts to only 2 months. It is by all accounts, a testy, yet affectionate relationship. Giammetti had run the business side of Valentino’s fashion house until their retirement in 2008.
Giammetti:
“Ours is not a story of money or fashion. It was a story of love. There has never been an article about us in this sense. I think the world has changed a lot & that once it would have been embarrassing to read but it’s not anymore.”
Valentino:
“Giancarlo & I understand each other, but his character is the opposite of mine. There are only 3 things that I know how to do: make a dress, decorate a house & receive guests …”
Giammetti:
“We were lovers for 22 years. Now it’s a fraternal love, a relationship with nothing sexual in it. Yet a great love remains, ancient, surviving.”
Although they are open about being gay, Valentino & Giammetti are prudish in their perceptions. Bruce Hoeksema, Valentino’s current boyfriend/assistant for the past 18 years:
“When Giancarlo sees male couple kissing in a restaurant he says, ‘Disgusting!’. If he sees 2 men holding hands on the street, he yells out ‘Queers!’.”
Yesterday afternoon, when I should have been directing my own staff working in the garden, I caught Matt Tyrnauer‘s extremely engaging, often hilarious documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008), currently available on Netflix, as I tried to get pumped for this Born This Day post. Watching the diminutive, grandly coiffed, hidden-eyed, orange-tinted, ill-tempered, impatient absolute despot Valentino was like enjoying chocolate & Cognac until that instant comes when you find that you are queasy from having consumed too much richness.
Although Giammetti & Valentino broke-up in 1972, they live together in a sort of big extended family along with boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, ex-boyfriends’ wives & children, assorted minor European royalty, hangers-on & lackeys.
Valentino travels exclusively on his own airplanes & yachts with a full entourage. I ride a bike. He owns extraordinary homes in Rome, London, NYC, Gstaad, Tuscany & a castle in the countryside outside of Paris. I live in a tiny hovel in Portland, Oregon. One of the very few things we have in common, Valentino adores dogs. He named a second line of designer clothing for canines after his late pug Oliver. Today Valentino has piles of pugs: Molly, Milton, Monty, Margot, Maude & Maggie. When traveling on his 14-seat jet, 3 cars are needed to move Valentino & his group to & from the airport: one to move Valentino & his BF, another for the luggage & the staff, & one to transport the pugs. I make my terriers carry their own poop-bags.
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