David Bailey Campaign
Legendary fashion photographer David Bailey didn’t have to search very far when he was scouting locations for the Valentino Haute Couture Fall/Winter 1990/91 campaign. “He did not wait a second,” Mr. Giammetti recalls. “He saw my office and asked me immediately if he could use it.” Featuring model Magali, an American who was living in Rome at the time, the campaign’s real star is indeed Mr. Giammetti’s office, a renaissance-era space that once served as the throne room that hosted Popes visiting aristocratic families in Rome. Mr. Giammetti worked with architect Tommaso Ziffer to restore and update the room, adding wood paneling and pieces from Mr. Giammetti’s extensive collection of modern art. That mix of old and new made for the perfect backdrop for Bailey—that most iconic of mod-era photographers—to shoot that season’s sixties-influenced, yet aristocratically sophisticated couture collection. It also helped, on a logistical level, that Mr. Giammetti’s office is huge. There was no trouble fitting in the whole crew. “Gianni Agnelli compared it to the office of Charlie Chaplin in the movie The Great Dictator,” Mr. Giammetti says. “My office is enormous.”