With Gratitude to Valentino Garavani

I’ll just say this right up front … I'm not a documentary person. But "The Last Emperor," the 2008 film about Valentino Garavani preparing for his final fashion show before his company’s sale and his own retirement, I watched three times.

Valentino is fashion. Watching the film teaches you what it’s like to be fashion.

Each viewing revealed something new for me. His creative process. The fearlessness. The meticulous attention to detail paired with a bold, sweeping vision. Watching him work was like watching someone paint on the largest possible canvas while never losing sight of a single brush of color.

His final show in Rome was breathtaking. Against the backdrop of Rome itself, Valentino proved he was exactly what the documentary called him: The Last Emperor in his field.

Yesterday, we lost him.

What strikes me most isn't just his passing, because at 93 we knew it had to be coming at some point. It's what his passing represents.

Valentino was a couturier. Not just a fashion designer. A couturier is a formal designation, earned through formal training in fashion design, years of building a portfolio, mastering sewing and tailoring, and ultimately creating custom pieces for clients. It's a craft that requires you to be more than skilled. It requires vision, authority, integrity, and yes an incredible client base.

Valentino was the last of them. The last of the originals. The last couturier who defined an era and held that definition throughout his entire career.

Sure, new generations work for design houses now. They're incredibly talented. They're creating every season. But I don’t know quite how to describe it … it's just different. Something shifted when the couturiers started retiring, one by one, until Valentino remained alone at the top. And now even he is gone.

What I took from watching him work was this: creative authority isn't about volume or trend-chasing. It's about having a vision so clear, so uncompromising, and so rooted in craft that everything you create carries the weight of your name. Valentino never designed to follow. He designed to lead. And decades later, people still follow.

In a way, watching the film changed how I approach my own work. In a world obsessed with speed and noise, there's something special about caring about your craft. Creating with intention. Creating with your name behind it.

Thank you, Valentino, for showing what it looks like to be the last of something because you were the best of something.

What's your experience? JIM