Royals

The latest must-binge to hit Netflix is The Crown, starring Claire Foy as a young Queen Elizabeth II. If that series has whet your appetite for all things monarchic, look no further than the Valentino archives. Mr. Valentino has attired a good many of the world's royals—including Queen Elizabeth's own sister, Princess Margaret Windsor—and he counts several of them of as friends.

Princess Rosario of Bulgaria is one member of the Valentino extended family; ditto Countess Georgina Brandolini d'Adda. In the 1970s, Princess Ira von Furstenburg was a fixture in Mr. Valentino and Mr. Giammetti's jetset scene—note the snaps of her backstage at a Valentino show in Rome, and at a dinner in Paris for the debut of the first Valentino perfume. (At the latter, she's seated with likewise royal Begum Aga Khan, and Mikhail Baryshnikov, royalty of another kind.) Italian Princess Luciana Pignatelli modeled for Valentino in the 1960s, while Princess Caroline of Hanover got the Valentino bug from her mother, Grace Kelly—princess first of Hollywood, then formally of Monaco—and passed it down to her daughter, Charlotte Casiraghi. Alongside the many princesses, there have also been queens: Queen Rania of Jordan and Queen Sofia of Spain are both confirmed Valentino fans.

Of course, for crown-watchers, there's nothing better than a royal wedding. Naturally, Mr. Valentino, wedding gown maker extraordinaire, has outfitted royal nuptials: When Maxima Zorreguieta wed the Netherlands' Prince William of Orange, she wore Valentino, as did American heiress Marie-Chantal Miller when she tied the knot with Prince Pavlos of Greece. The latter wedding was truly a fairy tale affair—one of Mr. Valentino's crowning glories, you might say.