“Your Valentine” he wrote in his blood

How a martyr legend became the eagerly marketed festival of lovers, with greetings and gifts: for today’s Valentine’s Day.

It’s not Valen Tuesday. February 14 falls on a Monday this year. The day is dedicated to flowers and – Valentine. As a first name, which is derived from the Latin “valere” for “to be strong”, it always ranks among the top hundred in German-speaking countries, and in some years among the top fifty.

Valentine sounds good in many languages. But above all in Italian: the marketing instinct of the fashion tsar Garavani, who will be ninety this spring, made him instinctively choose the best-sounding of his three first names, Valentino, Clemente and Ludovico. This is how Valentino became a world label. Characterized by three colors: black, white, but above all the “Valentino red” for the evening gowns. Red, as the color of love and the lifeblood, also leads deep down to the roots of the Valentin myth, to the blood of the martyrs.

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