by Roberto Cavalli, who has died at the age of 83, was the ultimate Italian fashion designer known as the “Leopard King”, who unleashed on the world his fever dream of exotic animal prints, sandblasted skintight jeans and gravity-defying dresses. He became famous in the 1970s with the patronage of Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, and went on to dress, in successive years, Madonna, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lopez, Gisele Bundchen, Britney Spears, Beyoncé and Kate Moss.
His skin riot catwalk shows, both animal and human, were summed up by one critic as “Me Cavalli, You Jane”. His clothes may have been “barely there”, but minimalism, or “meeen-imal-eeez-mo” as he sneers, was anathema to him. When tougher looks dominated the catwalks in the 1980s and 1990s, he refused to give up, refusing to be part of what he called the industrialization of fashion. “I can’t make anything out of two meters of plain black fabric,” he insisted. “It’s terrible.”
His over-the-top outfits were designed to be worn casually, but with the fingers of the wearer firmly crossed so that nothing anatomical would fall out. He created the tight crystal-and-lamé outfits for the Spice Girls’ 2007-08 comeback tour and Shakira’s grass skirts for her 2010 World Cup performances in Johannesburg; he preferred to dress singers than actresses because they had “more personality”, and Christina Aguilera declared his “muse”.
Cavalli was an unrestrained, leather-skinned, Cuban-cigar-smoking and perma-tanned hedonist who enthusiastically claimed the title “king of bling”. His philosophy was that “sometimes excess is successful”. His rambling home in Tuscany was shared with a menagerie that included a St Bernard, an Alsatian, a Persian cat called Pussy, an iguana, two parrots, a rooster and a monkey who kept him company while he watched TV. He had a tiger cub, but gave it to the circus when it started biting.
His fashion house was indelibly associated with animal print, which he printed on his cars and on the arms of his ubiquitous sunglasses. His earliest prints were of flowers, but “I began to realize that even fish have a wonderful ‘dress’ of color, as does the snake and the tiger,” he told Vogue. “I begin to understand that God is really the best designer, so I began to copy God.” (Being pro-animal, however, is not anti-fur; Cindy Crawford marked her public split from the animal rights pressure group Peta by modeling a chocolate mink coat for Cavalli in 2002.)
He claimed to be the only straight man of fashion, and said he loved women because “they are much smarter than men. I’m not gay… I hate men, dressed or naked, but women…” He insisted, however, that women should not wear black or swear at all, because “a woman’s mouth should always be clean.”
In 2005 he teamed up with Hugh Hefner to revamp the Playboy bunny outfit, updating the cropped tuxedo with raven-style cuffs and other S&M words. Of his 2010 show, the New York Times noted that “Roberto Cavalli’s catwalks looked like they could take to the streets”.
Like his rival Gianni Versace (“we both like to make a beautiful woman sexy”), he reveled in being part of the jet set, and took it upon himself to embody his brand’s bombastic vision of the relentlessly exceptional, with the luxury Freedom (inspired by Batman), exquisite homes in Florence, Paris and New York, and a series of racehorses.
“When I do an interview, I have to say things that my audience likes. And to the general public I have to say that I like going out at night. That I only drink Dom Pérignon champagne or that I only spend time on the French Riviera,” he explained. He was an enthusiastic early adopter on Twitter, asking his followers: “Do you prefer sex… in the day or at night??”
He understood that fame demands fame, and no one believed in Roberto Cavalli more than Roberto Cavalli. What he achieved was an instantly recognizable style: in the words of The Independent, “molto sexy, molto animal print and molto, molto Italiano”.
Roberto Cavalli was born in a Tuscan village on 15 November 1940, the son of Giorgio Cavalli, a surveyor of a mining company who in 1944 was among a group of civilians who lined up against a wall and was shot dead during a Nazi massacre, revenge for attacks. by the parties. The traumatized Roberto was left for many years with a stutter.
His maternal grandfather was Giuseppe Rossi, an Impressionist painter who exhibited at the Uffizi in Florence and whose artistic talent Roberto inherited through his seamstress mother, Marcella (née Rossi). “It’s like the Ten Commandments you get from your mother. They are set in stone and difficult to break,” he explained.
Moving with her older sister to Florence, he dropped out of school. At the age of 19 he began studying art and textile printing at the Art Institute, and paid for himself by selling hand-painted t-shirts. He discovered haute couture on a transformative visit to Paris, and opened a studio on his return to Florence, selling his designs to Pierre Cardin and Hermès, and pioneering a new technology for printing patterns on leather.
His first collection was shown in 1970 at the Salon du Prêt-à-Porter in Paris and in 1972 he presented patchwork designs on jeans in Florence. That year he opened Limbo in St Tropez, a sand-floor shop that specializes in unabashedly sexy little numbers.
In the early 1990s Cavalli added Lycra to jeans to make them stretchier, tighter and sexier (a technique pioneered by Fiorucci). He tried them on a “flat and thin” model and “suddenly she looked so sexy… and we could see her little booty”. He sandblasted them, painted a snake design on the leg and created a sensation by wearing Naomi Campbell on the Milan runway.
His first male client was Lenny Kravitz, and he later dressed Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake and Pharell Williams. Elton John and David Beckham bought the same £500 Cavalli silk shirt.
Cavalli discovered London relatively late. His spring-summer 2002 collection was themed around an Italian-style English garden party, with faded rose prints adorning his tops and fronts, laser-cut suede maxi coats and lived-in leather jackets, and in April 2004 he did he opened his first London shop. “The English are more experienced in creative ideas,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “In Italy, women literally wear my clothes. But English women translate them in their own way.”
It gained popularity in the 2000s, “representing the best of the market aimed at women for whom life is one long music video”, as one reviewer put it. He even made leopard-print jeans and black leather trousers for children. His work became increasingly visible on the high street, including a line created in 2007 for H&M. His wealth was estimated at £200 million.
However, he ran into trouble in 2004 with a collection of underwear and swimwear for Harrods in London that featured images of Hindu deities. The store apologized and removed the garments from sale, with the designer insisting it was an “innocent mistake”.
Other scandals included a high-profile investigation in 2002 into tax evasion, for which he was convicted but eventually acquitted; and signed Kate Moss in 2005 for a comeback shoot after she was photographed apparently snorting cocaine. He regretted getting cosmetic surgery, and explained: “Why did I get that stupid operation? I had a beautiful nose.”
In 1964 Roberto Cavalli married his high school sweetheart Silvanella Giannoni; they had two children. The marriage dissolved after nine years and in 1980 he married Eva Düringer, who became his business partner. They met three years earlier when he was judging the Miss Universe pageant in which the 17-year-old Miss Austria was a contestant. “He followed me with his eyes and I followed him to Florence,” she told the Daily Telegraph.
They had three children, but the marriage dissolved in 2010 and five years later he sold his Roberto Cavalli brand to an investment company. Last year he had a sixth child with Swedish model Sandra Nilsson, who was 45 years his junior.
Roberto Cavalli, born 15 November 1940, died 12 April 2024
