Meghan Markle Desperately Pushing for an Invitation to Valentino's A-list Funeral in Rome — She's 'Very Deliberate About Making Sure She's Included'

After successfully inviting herself to Paris Fashion Week, Meghan Markle is using her unrelenting persistence yet again, this time angling for a place at legendary designer Valentino's upcoming funeral, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

Valentino died at the age of 93 on January 19, and his funeral is expected to draw a slew of A-list names from both high fashion and Hollywood, after dressing so many stars for decades.

The Diva Duchess, 44, wants to make sure she doesn't miss out on the super stylish networking opportunity of a lifetime.

"She's quietly reaching out to Valentino’s inner circle, hoping to secure a seat among the fashion elite,” a source told Hollywood insider Rob Shuter, who wrote about it on Substack.

"Meghan wants to pay her respects and be seen honoring a designer she’s admired for years. She's very deliberate about making sure she's included," the insider dished.

While Markle never attended any of Valentino's runway shows, she showed her support by wearing the designer on numerous occasions.

She donned a red capelet dress during a royal tour of Morocco in 2019, a white minidress with floral appliques for Global Citizen Live in 2021, and an oversized white pantsuit for the 2022 Invictus Games.

Valentino's funeral is taking place in Rome, at the Basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri on Friday, January 23.

"Meghan sees this as an opportunity," spilled the spy.

"It’s not just paying respects — it's about being part of the inner circle of the fashion world. She knows this is one of those moments where image and timing matter," the insider continued.

Not only will fashion industry peers, friends, and models be present, but also possibly big stars, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Hathaway, and Sarah Jessica Parker, are expected to attend.

Already, throngs of fans and fashion faithful lined up to pay their respects to Valentino, as his body lay in state in Piazza Mignanelli for several days ahead of the funeral.

The domineering duchess has proven she has the ability to twist arms in the fashion industry by scoring a front-row seat at Balenciaga's Paris Fashion Week show in October 2025.

It turned out she invited herself rather than being asked by creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli to attend.

The Italian designer revealed after the catwalk presentation, "She reached out and said she’d love to come to the show. There was no strategy or big orchestration. I didn’t tell anyone she was coming because I wanted it to stay a surprise.”

Markle might be able to lean on Piccioli for a possible invite, since he served as co-creative director at Valentino from 2008, then became the brand's chief creative director from 2016 through 2024 before departing for Balenciaga.

If Markle somehow managed to score one of the much-coveted invitations to Valentino's funeral, hopefully, she won't make headlines for all the wrong reasons as she did at Paris Fashion Week.

The former cable TV actress took an Instagram Story video out the window of her chauffeured SUV as it drove along the Seine River at night. She showed the Pont Alexandre III and the Pont des Invalides, then swung the camera to catch her plopping her feet up on the seat just before she reached the Pont de l'Alma.

The tunnel underneath that bridge is where her late mother-in-law, Princess Diana, died in a horrific 1997 car crash.

Not only was the location disturbing, as Markle is married to Diana's son, Prince Harry, the video reportedly also left her eldest child, Prince William, "livid beyond words."

“To him, it wasn’t just bad taste — it was personal desecration. That tunnel is sacred ground. For Meghan to treat it like a selfie moment was the ultimate insult," an insider shared about the future king's reaction at the time.