- Fashion was in Ungaro’s blood. He was born in Aix-en-Provence to an Italian tailor, who had immigrated from Brindisi. His father gave him his first sewing machine, which Ungaro took to from an early age.
- At the age of 25, Ungaro began working as an assistant to Cristobal Balenciaga in Paris. Just a few years later, he founded his namesake couture house with the help of four seamstresses and, in a controversial move, opted not to show eveningwear. “They are not my style. I am a man of this age and I will design for women of this age,” he explained.
- In 1998, Giambattista Valli left his position as creative director at Krizia to work side-by-side with Ungaro. The two worked together until 2004 when Valli left after a disagreement with Ungaro’s wife, the company’s global communications director.
- The designer grew up with six siblings in a happy household. He has said, “I think in French, but I laugh in Italian.”
- Ungaro designed while listening to classical music and has credited his love of the countryside for his liberal use of color.
- In 2005, Ungaro retired and sold his namesake label to Internet entrepreneur Asim Abdullah for $84 million.
- Ungaro was widely criticized for a 1990 ad campaign that featured images of a model being mounted by a dog.
- “Men loved a woman in an Ungaro dress, it was said, because the style and the vibrant colors made them imagine what she had on underneath — in a way that an Armani pantsuit did not — and, further, what they might do with this thought,” Cathy Horyn explained in a piece on Ungaro for The New York Times.
- Ungaro was the first fashion designer asked to address Oxford Union, a world renowned debating society.
- According to the Agence France-Presse, Ungaro told an audience at the Estoril Film Festival in Lisbon, Portugal that Lindsay Lohan’s collection for Ungaro was a disaster. “I’m furious but there isn’t a thing I can do. I have absolutely no link with that house.”
"Great cover, quite impactful."
