Valentino Garavani opened his fashion house in 1960, on Via Condotti in Rome, with backing from his father and a business partner, Giancarlo Giammetti. His first couture collection showed at the Pitti Palace in Florence in 1962. Within a decade he was dressing Jacqueline Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor.
Garavani died in Rome in January 2026, aged 93. The house carries on without him, and so does a perfume business far bigger than most people realise.
The first Valentino fragrance, plainly named Valentino, arrived in 1978. More followed through the decades, but the modern era is a story of licences. Puig, the Spanish group behind Paco Rabanne and Carolina Herrera, took the Valentino licence in 2010 and launched Valentina in 2011, then built out the Valentino Uomo line for men.
Then the licence moved. In May 2018 L'Oreal announced a long-term agreement with Maison Valentino, and it took over from Puig in January 2019. Its first big swing was Born in Roma, launched later in 2019 in men's and women's versions. The line has since grown into a whole family of flankers and now anchors Valentino's beauty business.
Here is the part the adverts leave out. Valentino does not make perfume. No fashion house of that size does. The scents are developed, produced and sold under licence, first by Puig, now by L'Oreal, using the same fragrance suppliers and aroma materials open to the rest of the industry. The name on the cap is fashion. The liquid is chemistry, and chemistry can be studied.
That is what we do. Born in Bella is our take on Born in Roma, a UK-made spray at 35% concentration, well above standard eau de parfum strength. It lives in our Valentino-inspired collection.
