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The Filmmaker
Matt Tyrnauer (Director/Producer) was born in Los Angeles and studied film at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. For sixteen years he has been an editor and writer for Vanity Fair magazine, where he is Special Correspondent. His feature articles for Vanity Fair include profiles of Martha Stewart (the August 2005 post-prison cover story, and a 2001 profile), Valentino Garavani, Siegfried and Roy, Tommy Hilfiger, Philippe Starck, Frank Gehry, green design pioneer William McDonough, producer Robert Evans, actor Greg Kinnear, and writer Bret Easton Ellis.
This is Tyrnauer’s first film, yet filmmaking - in university - and film studies have long been part of his life. His childhood and early education were steeped in movies. His father was a successful TV writer and producer, responsible for scripting some of the best-known programs on TV, such as “Colombo,” “The Virginian” and “Murder, She Wrote”, which his father produced.
Tyrnauer attended Crossroads School in Los Angeles, where the academic program was among the first in the nation to include serious film studies at the secondary school level. As a result, he was exposed to movies by Fellini, Antonioni, Godard, Rossellini, Bresson and many others at an early age. At Wesleyan University, he apprenticed under the film professor, Joseph W. Reed, a pioneer in American film scholarship. Tyrnauer aided Reed in his research on American masters John Ford, Howard Hawks, Michael Curtiz and Robert Aldrich. Tyrnauer’s honors thesis was an in depth analysis of the films of Robert Aldrich, his favorite director.
Tyrnauer’s journalism career began at Spy magazine. Graydon Carter, the co-founder of Spy, then hired Tyrnauer to write for him when Carter was editor of the New York Observer. In 1992, Tyrnauer edited the special edition of the New York Observer for the Democratic Convention in New York City. Later in 1992, Tyrnauer followed Graydon Carter to Vanity Fair, where he has worked ever since, as Editor-at-Large and author of major feature stories. He lives in New York City.
Director’s Statement I approached the story of Valentino from a journalistic standpoint, but soon after we began shooting, I discovered that direct cinema (the filmmaking style pioneered by the great Maysles brothers) would be much more powerful than any of the traditional "information seeking" practices a journalist usually employs. Valentino as a man, and a character, is bigger than life. When we rolled the dailies, we immediately saw that Valentino is a born movie star. He has a very engaging cinematic presence, yet he is unselfconscious of his actions. He plays himself 24/7, and he does a masterful job.
The story of this movie unfolds in the scenes between Valentino and his longtime business partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, an inseparable pair that together redefined the business of fashion, and, as I think becomes clear in the film, created a new definition of human partnership by becoming closer than any spouses could ever be. They are a part of the same person, or so it has seemed to many observers who know them much better than I.
The film was in production from June 2005 to July 2007, and we shot over 250 hours of footage with unprecedented access to Valentino and his extended family. When we screened all the raw footage before starting to edit, we were pleased to find we had more than a fashion movie on our hands. The result, I hope, is an engaging and entertaining portrait of an extraordinary partnership, the longest running in fashion, and a dramatic story about a master confronting the final act of his celebrated career. The movie, in certain ways—thanks almost entirely to its stars—plays more like a feature film than a documentary. What started as a journalistic inquiry, in the end, revealed a unique love story with the world of fashion as a backdrop.
Background Information
About Valentino Garavani
Over the last 45 years, Valentino’s work has come to represent a phenomenon in the history of fashion. No other great designer has achieved such creative and entrepreneurial longevity, always maintaining the spirit and true strength of the company that bore his name.
Born in Voghera (Italy), Valentino is one of the most important couturiers and innovators in fashion. From his memorable march to the Pitti Palace in 1962 to the Legion d' Honneur bestowed upon him by the President of the French Republic and the Minister of Culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres in 2005, to his honorary Parisian citizenship - the Medaille de Ville de Paris – granted to him by the Mayor Bertrand Delanoë in 2007, his 45 years of creativity defines the very essence of Made in Italy. His name is an international symbol of elegance and imagination, timelessness and beauty.
At the beginning, some 60 years ago, after studying in Paris at the school of the Chambre Syndicale de the Couture Parisienne under the tutelage of Jean Desses and Guy Laroche, Valentino moved to Rome to open his first fashion workshop. It is here that he met Giancarlo Giammetti, who became his associate and took care of the business strategies for the shop.
These are the first years of the “Sweet Life”. Valentino’s star began to rise as word spread of a new, brilliant creator of fashion in Rome. In 1968’s “White Collection,” Valentino first used his monogram as a decorative element on his dresses and accessories, beginning what would become “logomania.”
Valentino was the first Italian designer to launch Prêt-à-porter collections, opening boutiques all over the world in the 70’s and 80’s and creating advertising campaigns using internationally renowned photographers.
In February of 1990, Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti founded, with a contribution from Liz Taylor, L.I.F.E., a charity for children infected with HIV.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the first 30 years of Valentino’s career were celebrated with a series of spectacular events. “Valentino: Thirty Years of Magic” was staged at the Palazzo Mignanelli, Valentino headquarters. A year later, the show came to New York, representing Italy during the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America. More than 70,000 people came to show during its first two weeks.
In 2001, Julia Roberts accepted an Oscar wearing vintage Valentino, contributing to the launch of what went on to become one of the most significant fashion trends of the coming years: the Vintage.
In July of 2007, Valentino celebrated his 45 in the industry. The event took place in Rome, with a grand retrospective show at the Ara Pacis Museum, an exceptional haute couture parade and gala, accommodated in some of the most prestigious and evocative places in the capital, thanks to the sponsorship of the Comune di Roma, the Ministry of Assets and Cultural Activities, and the Presidency of the Republic.
The celebration brought the friends and collaborators of Valentino together with the most important journalists and fashion designers of the world, resulting in unprecedented media coverage. Aristocrats and others arrived in Rome in order to celebrate Valentino. This included: Shabanou of Iran, Miller and Pavlos of Greece, Ernst and Caroline of Hannover; colleagues and friends such as Giorgio Armani, Karl Lagerfeld and Tom Ford; and movie and music stars such as Uma Thurman, Sienna Miller, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Rupert Everett, Mick Jagger, Jennifer Hudson, and Eva Mendes.
In accordance with the celebrations, the city of Rome announced its desire to dedicate a museum to Valentino, a headquarters for a permanent collection of dresses, designs and materials from the archives, and also as a series of formatted initiatives for new professionals of Haute Couture and of fashion. The creative history of Valentino and his work – a symbol of Rome and its cultural life since the end of 50s – has become a legacy. The search for perfection and beauty had its beginning in Valentino and will never end.
About Giancarlo Giammetti
In the 1960’s, Giancarlo Giammetti interrupted his architectural studies in order to become Valentino’s associate. He took care of all strategic aspects of management and communication, quickly asserting himself as the co-craftsman of the brand’s fortune in the world, and as a true innovator of the fashion system. He introduced prêt-à-porter in Italy, sealed innovative license contracts, and studied new advertising strategies, constructing campaigns with the most important names in fashion photography.
He communicates Valentino to the world not only as an expressive individual and a great couturier, but also as a leader of the creative world. A style of the cultured and luxurious life that he himself - “the creative shadow of another creative”, as he’s been called, defines – embodies the Valentino brand.
In the ’90s Giammetti founded the Valentino Academy with Valentino, marking the first collaborative agreement between fashion and public administration, with a convention with the Comune di Roma to accommodate events destined to increase the city’s cultural prestige. With the couturier and the support of Elizabeth Taylor, he founded LIFE (Lottare: to fight, Informare: to inform, Formare: to form, Educare: to educate), an association to support children afflicted with AIDS.
Foreseeing the challenges of the 21st century, Giammetti strengthens the competitiveness of the Valentino brand on the worldwide market by signing the first agreement in Italy between fashion and finance in 1998. From that moment on, Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti, lacking direct heirs, determined the creative continuity of their brand, the world that they created.
