His home life is as ordered and complex and sophisticated as his work life. You don't find creations like this anymore. The Leopard comes to mind - this tale of a glorious, lost Italy. That's Valentino.

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.

His home life is as ordered and complex and sophisticated as his work life. You don't find creations like this anymore. The Leopard comes to mind - this tale of a glorious, lost Italy. That's Valentino.

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.

Giancarlo Giammetti has a lot of nervous energy. He's a director, really. He was trying to direct the Valentino movie over my shoulder. I don't blame him - that's been his job for 50 years. But I had final cut in the movie by contract and I wouldn't have made the movie if I had not been completely independent.

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.

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.