Sawt Falasteen - Mourners pay last respects to Italian icon Valentino

Rows of white roses and lilies lined the path into the simple room at Valentino's foundation headquarters where his wooden coffin was laid out, with loved ones sitting on either side.

"It's a perfect, simple, sober homage" to not only a talented artist but a "courteous, splendidly refined" person, said Giulia Carraro, 75, a former personal assistant who moved in his circle.

The designer, who launched his fashion house in 1960, dressed some of the world's most famous women, from Julia Roberts and Sharon Stone to Elizabeth Taylor and Nancy Reagan.

Next to the closed coffin, which was topped by a single red rose, sat Valentino's partner Giancarlo Giammetti, whose business acumen helped elevate the label to global prominence.

Valentino's creative director, Alessandro Michele, who earlier paid tribute to the designer's "rare sensibility", was also in attendance.

Another mourner held one of Valentino's beloved pugs.

Though Valentino loved white, he was perhaps best known for his gowns in a vivid "Valentino red".

"It is a red with the lightest touch of orange and magenta," created after the designer saw a woman in a red dress at an opera in Barcelona and "used her as his inspiration", Carraro told AFP.

- 'Beauty, love, passion' -

Mexican mourner Maotzin Contreras-Bejarano in Marchesi, dressed all in black but with her lips painted the famous red, told AFP: "I really wanted to be here, I had to be here."

"I have admired Valentino for so long, because he didn't just create things, he was beauty, he was love, he was passion", she said.

The designer came from "an epoch where things were made with heart and soul".

He embodied "the things the fashion world has lost: it's all business now", she said.

The designer's coffin is on display for two days at the Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti Foundation in Rome's historic centre, ahead of his church funeral in the city on Friday.

Seamstresses from the Valentino atelier, next to the Foundation, joined the hundreds of mourners paying their respects, while the windows in the Valentino shop were shrouded by blackout blinds.

The designer's motto was written across the blinds in white: "I love beauty. It's not my fault."

Valentino's death comes just months after the passing of another Italian great, Giorgio Armani, and along with flowers left outside the Foundation was a note suggesting the pair would now be designing clothes for angels.

Silvia Bocchino, 55, said she had taken a day off work and travelled to Rome as she felt a "duty" to pay her respects.

"Valentino has always been a legend to me, a role model. I was born in the 70s and witnessed his rise," she said.

She owned "a few little things" by the designer, bought "more than anything to have the feeling of touching beauty".

Valentino "left an imprint on what it means to be Italian, on how we are known in the world", she told AFP.

M.AbuKhalil--SF-PST