“There’s nothing else like it,” says Hathaway about the duo’s world. “It’s elegant, intentional, and elevated, yet relaxed, cozy, and fun. They are able to choose a lot of things that we think of as contradictory and make them complementary. I’m always amazed at how inspired and recharged I feel when I come away from my time with them.”
In 2016 the pair launched the Fondazione Valentino Garavani e Giancarlo Giammetti (FVG) to support their charitable and cultural endeavors. Now, as they sail into their golden years—“Vava” turned 93 in May and “GG” is 83—they are about to unveil their legacy project: an international center for the arts, fashion, and culture housed in a 10,800-square-foot palazzo next door to their old headquarters, which they have dubbed PM23, from its address in Piazza Mignanelli. What’s more, while Giammetti was overseeing the renovation of that building, he acquired a lease on the second-floor apartment on the Via Condotti.
Over the past decades it had been occupied by Anna Bulgari Calissoni, a matriarch of the jewelry dynasty, members of which own the palazzo. (LVMH, which acquired the majority stake in the Bulgari brand in 2011, operates its flagship boutique on the street level.) A few years ago Giammetti heard that the elderly Calissoni had died. “I jumped on it!” he recounts, referring to her apartment. In fact, he already had a stunning apartment on the fourth floor, which Peter Marino decorated for him. On the second floor, where frescoed walls, marble floors, and beamed ceilings were still intact, Giammetti envisioned a regal office where he could conduct business and entertain on behalf of the FVG.
As reimagined by the Milan-based design firm Studio Peregalli Sartori, it is now a space fit for a fashion monarch as well as a showcase for Giammetti’s stellar collection of modern and contemporary art. Most recently, two monumental paintings by Anselm Kiefer—heavily layered with emulsion, shellac, coal, lead, and gold leaf—were hoisted upon the walls of the very salone where Fiesta made its debut.
