When I went to see Valentino in Rome, I discovered 120 women in these ateliers who sew $100,000 dresses. There are no sewing machines. It's all done by hand for thousands of hours. It's a dying art and Valentino is really the last practitioner, the last person at the top of his house, which is why I called it The Last Emperor. That world is gone. You can almost see it slipping away as the cameras are rolling.

When I went to see Valentino in Rome, I discovered 120 women in these ateliers who sew $100,000 dresses. There are no sewing machines. It's all done by hand for thousands of hours. It's a dying art and Valentino is really the last practitioner, the last person at the top of his house, which is why I called it The Last Emperor. That world is gone. You can almost see it slipping away as the cameras are rolling.

One of my favorite scenes in Fellini is the ecclesiastical fashion show in Roma, and the end of 8 ½, when all the characters in the life of Guido, Marcello Mastroianni, get together and do this grand procession. That was on my mind, especially at the 45th anniversary, when all those characters in Valentino's life returned to Rome. I kept watching that and saying, if only we can arrange that grand procession at the end...and it kind of happened.

Valentino Garavani is never really shown himself as anything other than this gracious diplomat of the dolce vita. That's his preferred look. But he's a temperamental genius - a man of cyclone force, passion, and perfectionist impulses who has very little tolerance for things that aren't exactly as he wants them to be.

When Karl Lagerfeld does a documentary, it's Karl Lagerfeld spouting in front of the camera for two hours. Valentino isn't like that. He's not very verbally expressive. He's very controlled and he needs to be perfect all the time - never a hair out of place, always the impeccable outfit.

What we found is that Valentino is actually a tremendous star - almost a movie star, really, because he plays himself all the time. The camera loves him.

Ralph Lauren and Valentino have a lot of common. Ralph Lauren was one of the first really to put himself at the center of the story, and Valentino was even earlier.