Lance Avery Morgan
He Redefined Elegance, Ruled Couture For Half A Century & Left Behind A Legacy Stitched In Love, Discipline, And Unforgettable Red
Red. Legendary. Exquisite. For decades, those words were less descriptors than reflexes, summoned instantly at the mere mention of Valentino Garavani. Now, as the fashion, design, and style worlds mourn the passing of one of their last true emperors, they feel almost insufficient. Valentino was not simply a designer; he was a civilization of elegance unto himself, as our Lance Avery Morgan reveals in an update to a piece he wrote when the documentary about the designer debuted.
Few works capture that civilization as vividly as Valentino: The Last Emperor, the revelatory documentary created and directed by Matt Tyrnauer. Long before Valentino’s death, the film became an essential record, a love letter, and a time capsule, pulling back the heavy velvet curtain on a world that rarely allows outsiders past the fittings. Upon its release, the documentary was both a critical and financial success, selling out theaters across Texas and dominating the film festival circuit. It offered something fashion films seldom do: truth, intimacy, and consequence.
For Tyrnauer, a veteran Vanity Fair journalist making his directorial debut, access was everything. He first met Valentino and his business and life partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, while reporting a magazine piece several years earlier. That initial meeting unlocked what would become an unprecedented entrée into the most rarified corners of couture. When I caught up with Tyrnauer at Neiman Marcus in San Antonio ahead of the film’s premiere, he spoke with the zeal of someone deeply aware he was stewarding a story larger than fashion.
“The job is, of course, to tell the story in print,” Tyrnauer explained, “but there are certain things that can’t be captured that way, just like there are certain things that can’t be communicated on screen that you could do better in print. I wanted to use those visual muscles and tell a story visually.” What emerged is, quite simply, the most precise and emotionally accurate documentary ever made about haute couture.
At its heart, The Last Emperor is not only about Valentino’s work, but about the extraordinary partnership between Valentino and Giammetti, a personal and professional bond that endured for more than half a century. Watching them together, one senses that couture was merely the language through which their devotion was spoken. The film was especially revelatory in Italy, where Valentino’s openness about his sexuality startled audiences unaccustomed to such candor from a cultural icon.
“It shocked a lot of people in Italy,” Tyrnauer noted. “They weren’t used to Valentino talking about being gay.” He contextualized that surprise gently but firmly: “These men lived with their mothers until the mothers passed away. They lived their lives very differently from people in the modern United States. Italy is slow to change. And Rome, of course, is also the city of the Vatican.”
Filming itself became a study in devotion. Tyrnauer and his team commuted from New York to Rome nearly every month, often for seven to ten days at a time, shooting strategically and relentlessly. “We would arrive, shoot as much as possible, and follow storylines as they emerged,” he said. And emerge they did, with the ease and grace of silk unfurling across a cutting table.
Reality television could never counterfeit what unfolds here. The camera tracks gowns from conception to runway, trailing sequins, chiffon, and fur through the atelier as Valentino’s exacting eye misses nothing. “I knew I wanted to follow one dress,” Tyrnauer recalled. “Then that became many dresses. And then those dresses led us into dramas in their lives.” What was meant to be a one-year project stretched into two, largely because Valentino himself was changing.
At the one-year mark, whispers of retirement began to circulate. Valentino resisted them fiercely. “He wouldn’t talk about it. He wouldn’t give information. He would run from that reality,” Tyrnauer said. The ambiguity deepened when, late in filming, the company was suddenly sold. For a filmmaker, it was a gift of narrative tension; for Valentino, it was an existential reckoning. Here was an icon facing not only corporate upheaval, but the possibility that the end of his career might not be entirely his choice.
“He never admitted he was going to retire until the day he did,” Tyrnauer said. “We tried to get a sit-down interview for the last six months. We were with him every day, but he wouldn’t sit down.” The resulting drama unfolds across ateliers, palatial apartments, and country estates populated by celebrities who didn’t merely wear Valentino but revered him.
Yet for all its glamour, The Last Emperor is not ultimately about money or even fashion. It is about love: love of craft, love between partners, and love of a life built stitch by stitch. The film’s breathtaking finale, a $40 million gala staged as both celebration and farewell, lands now with even greater resonance. It feels less like an ending than a coronation.
Valentino Garavani has taken his final bow, but his legacy remains indelibly pressed into the fabric of culture itself. Red will never just be red again. And thanks to Tyrnauer’s film, the emperor’s story will forever be seen, not from a distance, but from inside the seams.
