The Wall Street Journal has a nice story on Giancarlo Giammetti’s new book of photographs. Deep in the text theres a reference to the birth of the Jet Set in the 1970s which somewhat prefigures the global class of Ultra High Net Worth Individuals that have coalesced around the art circuit. Valentino Garavani and Giammetti seem to be one of the connective lines between the two worlds:

It is a life that allowed Giammetti access to the highest echelons of art, society and celebrity, especially in the ’70s, when an international jet set was coalescing and he and Valentino were enthusiastic participants. There are Polaroids of a laughing Andy Warhol , whom the fashion executive befriended when they met in 1973. Warhol took a Polaroid of Giammetti and signed it; then Giammetti snapped a picture of Warhol and signed that. “Polaroid was like that. Throw it on the table, share them, see it immediately. It was a great way to get to know people, and everyone got to take something away with them,” Giammetti says. Many of the early photos, which include snapshots of Jack Nicholson , Bianca Jagger and designers Diane von Furstenberg and the late Halston, were taken at the gilded 72nd Street pad that Valentino bought in the 1970s. “It was outrageous to imagine that an Italian who was that young could buy an apartment like that in New York,” he remembers.

The Private Eye of Giancarlo Giammetti (WSJ Magazine)