In the years following the brand expanded to New York City and Ro[5] The label staged the first Valentino menswear show at Milan Fashion Week in 1985.

[6] Valentino has also, especially, designed wedding dresses for Elizabeth Taylor, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lopez, Courteney Cox, Sophie Hunter, Nicola Peltz[7] and Princess Madeleine of Sweden.

[8][9] In 1998, Garavani and Giammetti sold the company for approximately $300 million to the Holding di Partecipazioni Industriali (HdP), an Italian conglomerate controlled, in part, by the late Gianni Agnelli, the head of Fiat.

HdP put Valentino inside the same unit as the apparel producer GFT Net and alongside the sportswear manufacturer Fila.

[10] In 2001, Opera – a fund controlled by the Rome jewelry firm Bulgari – started talks to buy Valentino, but pulled out after it was unable to agree on a price.

[17] Under their direction, Valentino introduced a modernised aesthetic that Vogue described as "fresh-faced girls in long, fragile dresses"[18] and the success of the introduction of the "Rockstud" accessory line and "Rockrunner" sneakers.

In 2019, Valentino championed diversity by starring Adut Akech and Anwar Hadid in their advertising campaign for their "Born in Roma" fragrance.

[43] In 2021, the label signed a 10-year license agreement with the Switzerland-based Akoni Group for the design, manufacture and worldwide distribution of the brand's prescription frames and sunglasses.

[44] In 2003, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, then accessories directors, launched a younger diffusion line called Red Valentino.

[28] For its advertisement campaigns, Valentino has in the past worked with photographers including Deborah Turbeville (2011)[53] Terry Richardson (2016),[54] Inez and Vinoodh (2020)[55] and Michael Bailey-Gates (2022).

[56] For Valentino's Spring/Summer 2016 women's ready-to-wear collection, which referenced African culture, sporting prints and motifs commonly seen across the continent, photographer Steve McCurry shot a campaign set against the backdrop of Amboseli National Park in Kenya and included local Maasai people.

[57] Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Piccioli enlisted 23 celebrities – including Laura Dern, Frances McDormand and Gwyneth Paltrow – for his campaign.

Instead of being paid for their work, all of the Valentino subjects donated their fees (a total of 1 million euros) to the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome; in return, they got to pick who would capture their image, as well as what word they thought represented the values society needed at that time.

After a New York state trial judge dismissed that lawsuit, the landlord sued Valentino for $207.1 million, mainly to recover unpaid rent and to repair store damage.