Italian designer Roberto Cavalli dies at 83

Italian designer Roberto Cavalli, whose penchant for python and flamboyant animal prints made him the darling of the worldwide jet set for many years, died Friday, April 12, at 83, the luxurious firm stated.

“It’s with deep remorse and an ideal unhappiness the Roberto Cavalli Maison participates within the passing of its founder Roberto Cavalli,” wrote the corporate in a press release despatched to Agence France-Presse (AFP). “From humble beginnings in Florence Mr. Cavalli succeeded in changing into a globally acknowledged title liked and revered by all,” stated the corporate.

First seen within the Nineteen Seventies on stars equivalent to Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, Cavalli’s skin-baring, eye-popping types have been nonetheless favored years on by later generations of celebrities, from Kim Kardashian to Jennifer Lopez.

With a style for Ferraris, thoroughbred horses, fats cigars and tailor-made shirts unbuttoned to reveal his tanned chest, the designer’s personal life additionally appeared the stuff of fantasy. He married a Miss Universe runner-up, owned a purple helicopter and a Tuscan winery, and was on a first-name foundation with A-listers like Sharon Stone and Cindy Crawford.

However the designer additionally weathered challenges, together with a dry spell within the Nineteen Eighties when minimalism took maintain on runways and his form-fitting, feathered creations appeared out of step. A years-long trial in Italy on tax evasion fees in the end resulted in Cavalli’s acquittal, however after his eponymous vogue home started posting losses, a majority stake was offered to non-public fairness in 2015.

Finest identified for his use of printed leather-based and stretchy, sand-blasted denims, Cavalli all the time embraced the wow think about his designs, by no means encountering an animal print he didn’t like. The designer was tapped in 2005 to replace the Playboy Bunnies’ scanty uniform – true to kind, he launched one model in leopard print.

Celebration crasher

Born on November 15, 1940, in Florence, Italy’s premier leatherworking heart, Cavalli started portray on T-shirts to earn cash whereas at artwork college. He recalled in his weblog in 2012 how he gate-crashed a celebration in 1970, and, looking for to save lots of face when he met the host, who was a designer, advised him that he printed on leather-based. When the designer requested to see a few of his work the subsequent day, Cavalli hurried to search out samples of skinny, supple leather-based onto which he printed a flower design. The designer was impressed, and Cavalli was hooked.

Taking his inspiration from glove design, Cavalli started working with calfskin, patenting a brand new approach to print leather-based with patterns that quickly caught the attention of French luxurious items maker Hermes and the late designer Pierre Cardin.

Within the Nineteen Seventies, he opened a store in Saint Tropez, playground of the world’s glitterati, and debuted his assortment in Paris. He went on to current for the primary time in Italy at Florence’s opulent Palazzo Pitti, grabbing consideration together with his boho-chic patchwork designs on denim that married the unpretentious cloth with skilled tailoring.

‘I am copying God’

Of his ubiquitous use of prints, the animal lover – whose menagerie as soon as included a monkey – advised Vogue in 2011: “I like every part that’s of nature.” “I began to understand that even fish have a implausible coloured ‘gown’, so does the snake, and the tiger. I begin(ed) to know that God is basically the very best designer, so I began to repeat God,” he advised the journal.

Within the Nineteen Eighties Cavalli’s immediately recognizable, unique designs have been out of sync with the minimalist look that was all the fashion, however the designer got here again with a bang a decade later with distressed-looking denims that proved a success.

His vogue empire expanded to house furnishings, wine, footwear, jewelry and even a line of vodka, its bottle sheathed in snakeskin. Taking his model to the excessive road, he designed a fast-fashion line for Swedish retail big H&M and tour outfits for Beyonce, amongst others.

Nonetheless, the label started to endure monetary difficulties amid elevated competitors from well-funded manufacturers owned by vogue conglomerates LVMH and Kering, and Cavalli stepped down as inventive director in 2013. Two years later, Milan-based personal fairness group Clessidra purchased a 90% stake within the firm, however a restructuring did not reverse losses.

After submitting for administration and shutting its US shops, the style group was purchased in November 2019 by Imaginative and prescient Investments, the personal funding firm of Dubai real-estate billionaire Hussain Sajwani.

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