Roberto Cavalli, the Unrepentant Maximalist • PhilSTAR Life

He built a global lifestyle brand with a sparkling aesthetic that has sold across classes and cultures throughout the decades – with several renaissances, thanks to his skill at reinventing clothes for different eras. Including fans principles from the palazzos who wear it with irony, but also from the fashion-conscious people who combine it with streetwear. It has even been rediscovered by the Zoomers: Bretman Rock, the Filipino-American social media star, was seen in Cavalli’s tiger-striped dress from the year 2000.

His high-profile confidence and success belied his youth when he stuttered after a tragedy in his suburb near Florence, where he was born in 1940 to Giorgio and Marcella (Rossi) Cavalli, a mining factory surveyor and a seamstress respectively. . His father was part of a group of local men rounded up and slaughtered by the German army in 1944 in retaliation for an attack by Italian resistance soldiers.

It was traumatic for Roberto, turning him into a rebellious teenager until he found his calling in 1957 when he entered the Istituto d’Arte art school. After all, it was in his lineage, as his maternal grandfather, Giuseppe Rossi, was a respected painter of the Macchiaioli movement and his mother hand-painted the dresses she made between selling coal to increase the family income.

Her diligence inspired him to start making money himself and find a mechanical process to make her hand painting more efficient. After studying Como’s high-end textile companies, he started printing RTW sweaters for Mariuccia Mandelli from Krizia. His passion for animal was already clear and simulated the fur of wild animals, which caught Mariuccia’s attention. He always looked at nature.

“I began to realize that even fish have a fantastically colored ‘dress’, just like the snake and the tiger. I started to understand that God is really the best designer, so I started copying God,” he said in an interview.

Before long, Cavalli had a studio, employees, a much-dreamed-of Ferrari and enough money to impress Silvanella Giannoni’s banker father, who was his inspiration to achieve so much at such a young age. They married in 1964 and had two children before divorcing in 1974.

His breakthrough may have been in 1969 when he crashed a party for shoe designer Mario Valentino and bragged that he could print on leather even though he couldn’t, but he immediately got to work quickly until he produced a sample that he patented and later debuted. in Paris for Hermès and Pierre Cardin, among others. At the age of 32, he presented his first collection of the same name at the Salon for Prêt-a-Porter.

The printed leather for clothing didn’t really fly, so for Palazzo Pitti he designed patchworks of leather, brocade, printed textiles and denim that were cut from worn-out jeans sourced from an American prison. A wild mix of art poora materials artistically composed using Italian craft skills, were a big hit with the well-to-do, who loved the boho-hippie-rock chic of Talitha Getty.

He eventually opened his first boutique in St. Tropez, where he became a celebrity and high-end divorcee with a penchant for beautiful women, landing him as a judge in the 1977 Miss Universe pageant, where he met his second wife in Miss Austria, Eva Düringer. , whom he married in 1980. She became his model, business manager and mother of their three children before divorcing in 2010.

Cavalli’s maximalism fell out of favor in the 1980s, when designers such as Calvin Klein and Rei Kawakubo were the trendsetters of minimalism. However, he still had his clientele and transitioned to a triumphant second wind in the 1990s when he reinvented luxury denim and created the sandblasted look, as well as the Lycra-added stretch jeans that had a more snug and sexier fit. He personally printed and pressed intertwined snake onto it to create the winning pair that Naomi Campbell modeled on the catwalk. By the end of that decade, it was a favorite both on the red carpet and on stage, worn by Jennifer Lopez, Béyonce and Christina Aguilera. On television, Carrie Bradshaw wore his giraffe print Sex and the city.

He remained relevant in the 2000s, had the power to organize a show at the Ponte Vecchio in 2006, and in 2007 was the first Italian designer to take an H&M collection that sold out, expanding into furniture and homewares, while he opened clubs and cafes in the 2000s in cities ranging from Miami to Dubai.

His stores numbered almost 200 worldwide. He handed over the design reins in 2015 to Peter Dundas, who was succeeded by Paul Surridge in 2017 and by Fausto Puglisi in 2020.

Their designs stayed true to the spirit of the founder whose own life reflected the glitz and high wattage of his fashion collections until the end.

He even had a son in 2023 with a new partner, Swedish model and actor Sandra Nilsson. He wrote an autobiography: “Just Me!” where, however, he wanted to show a different side by saying: “The recital is over, so I take the stage and introduce the real me. This is not a book about fashion, it is about a boy from a modest family who achieved success thanks to his willpower.”

He also reiterated his life’s purpose: “To make women beautiful.” Wanting to inspire the younger generation, he gave a lecture to students in Oxford, where he arrived on his private jet, telling them that “behind the fantastic yacht, the champagne, the parties is a man called Roberto Cavalli who works very, very hard has worked. to create this beautiful life.”