Valentina, Who Garbed Garbo, Swanson, Dies

NEW YORK — Valentina Nicholaevna Sanana Schlee, who under the professional name Valentina became one of the best-known designers of high-fashion clothes in the 1940s and 1950s, died Thursday, it was reported today.

Valentina, 90, died at her Manhattan apartment of Parkinson’s disease, the New York Times said.

She was the widow of George Schlee, the financier who served as her business partner and as an adviser to Greta Garbo, who was one of Valentina’s notable clients.

Valentina also designed clothes for such show business personalities as Katharine Hepburn, Mary Martin, Gloria Swanson and Gertrude Lawrence, Paulette Goddard, Rosalind Russell and Norma Shearer.

She was born in Kiev and was fleeing the country at the time of the revolution when she met her future husband at the railroad station in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol. After they were married, they lived in Athens, Rome and Paris before coming to America in 1923.