Roberto Cavalli
Roberto Cavalli passed away at the age of 83. The Florentine designer leaves us after a long illness, but his art will always remain in the heritage of Italian fashion.
Roberto Cavalli at the backstage of his Fall 2006 menswear and Pre-Fall 2006 womenswear runway show. Photo by David Yoder, WWD.
Who's Roberto?
His career is deeply rooted in art. Starting as a student at the Florence Institute of Art, where he specialized in the textile application of painting, Roberto Cavalli quickly caught the attention of giants like Hermes and Pierre Cardin. However, it was in 1970 that a turning point occurred when he presented his first ready-to-wear collection in Paris. He soon imposed a new, seductive, and bold style characterized by animal prints and roars. His feline woman quickly became a trademark that still endures today. Roberto Cavalli became one of the kings of maximalism in Italian fashion, leaving a mark especially in the fashion of the '90s and early 2000s. He dressed Shakira, Lenny Kravitz, Victoria Beckham, Christina Aguilera, Madonna, and many other icons. Countless famous faces entrusted their style to his skillful hands. In 2015, he stepped down from leading the brand, never losing his passion for creating. Today, designer Fausto Puglisi carries on his legacy as the creative director of the brand. Besides leaving a significant void in the fashion world, the designer also leaves behind a large family of six children, the youngest born in 2023.
Cavalli's Style
A whirlwind of leopard prints, marine backgrounds, and images of splendid, lush nature in a kaleidoscope of colors told a story of explosive and unabashed femininity. There were also decorated, painted, and printed jeans with a unique technique; they hugged the body like a second skin, elasticized and undeniably sexy. Sexy, like the sinuous silk slips with trains. It was an aggressive, exhibitionist, and shameless fashion, yet in 1994, the year of his return to the Milan Fashion Week runway, Cavalli created "the woman." That runway marked the beginning of a phenomenon characterized by opulence and ostentation, which the designer explained as follows: "Mine is the success of excess. Evidently, women want to feel beautiful and desired." Genius, eccentricity, and creativity, farewell Roberto.
