Remembering Italian Couturier Roberto Cavalli (1940 – 2024)

Cavalli earned his mononym. For more than 40 years the designer was known for his innovations, dedication to his craft and his aesthetic: a personal take on rock-and-roll glamor, framed and informed by the bohemian end of the luxury style spectrum. Behind the glitter and the opulence there was an incredible mind, one as intrigued by possibilities as the gentleman was committed to perfecting his vision. Which makes sense, as Cavalli believed that “excess is success.”

Blessed with a natural talent for business that most creatives do not possess, as well as an enviable sense of what could be achieved through marketing, Cavalli spent decades oscillating between an astonishingly large number of licensing agreements and indulging the artisan at his core by developing new techniques to transform the decadent textiles he used to make women feel beautiful.

Though he did design (and license) clothing and accessories for men, Cavalli even created lines of children’s clothing (Angels & Devils), it was women who inspired Cavalli and who offered him a vocation. Naomi Campbell, one of Cavalli’s favorite models, was selected to wear his newest invention down his runway in 1993; denim with Lycra, which is stretch denim, and it revolutionized the way that clothing was manufactured, produced and sold.

Born in Florence on November 15, 1940, Cavalli’s mother was a seamstress and his father worked as a mining company’s surveyor. His maternal grandfather, Giuseppe Rossi, was a painter who had exhibited work at Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, and was an important figure in the Italian Macchiaioli movement, a late 19th century Tuscan painting school, similar conceptually to the idea of Italian impressionists.

In 1944, when Cavalli was still a very young child, his father was murdered by German soldiers along with several other local men. Following an attack by members of the Italian Resistance movement, the Germans brutally retaliated by rounding up a group of locals, likely uninvolved, and shooting them in front of their families. Roberto, who was 4 when this happened, was understandably traumatized and developed a stutter. Apparently he later became quite the rebellious teen, issues which seemed to resolve when he began to study art at the Istituto d’Arte in 1957.

Cavalli’s art education included printmaking, and this was how he was introduced to the process for transferring designs onto fabrics. From birth he was said to be artistically inclined, and with a partial education he began to design and sell his own clothing. By the mid 1960s he was selling those designs to Pierre Cardin and Hermès. “My dream,” Cavalli explained later in life, “maybe because of my family, was to become a painter. I chose in one moment the direction of textiles; from textiles I went to fashion.”

Cavalli’s eponymous brand was founded in 1970, the same year he invented and patented a new technique for printing onto leather and suede. Cavalli’s first collection, which included evening gowns made of printed leather, debuted at Porte de Versailles, at Paris’ Salon du Prêt-à-Porter. A Cavalli boutique in Saint-Tropez, called Limbo, opened in 1972 and was an immediate success, leading to an invitation to sell his leather goods at Sala Bianca in the Palazzo Pitti. This location was one of the sites where Giovanni Battista Giorgini held his “Made in Italy” fashion shows in the early 1950s, and where Fendi sold next to Krizia and Missoni, a perfect space for Cavalli to find his client.

The 1980s brought cultural shifts and new market challenges, and the advent of Power Dressing, Prep, and minimalism took the spotlight from the wild prints and bejeweled excess on runways and in fashion magazines. Cavalli might have been shaken, but he absolutely survived, and the 1990s were a very good decade for the Roberto’s empire. Denim brought him even more success, especially a new innovation to the fabric itself, and jeans made certain that his work caught the attention of the globe.

It wasn’t until 1999 that the first Roberto Cavalli boutique opened in the U.S., but it was essentially an immediate success. Within ten years from its opening, the company had more than 60 locations around the world, keeping the spirit of the 20th century’s Italian designer alive and well. In many ways Cavalli successes were keen analogies to the odd mix of hope and the excess alive in equal proportion at the dawn of the newest millennium. And as the first years of the new century flew by, it was one triumph after another in rapid succession for Roberto Cavalli.

In 2005, Playboy asked Cavalli to rework its famous “Bunny” costume for the new millennium. When the Spice Girls had their reunion tour in 2007, they asked the designer to please make costumes. That same year, Roberto Cavalli became one of the first companies to partner with the multinational fast-fashion brand H&M, to make a single collection together.

In 2008, Cavalli was a guest judge for season 4, episode eleven of Project Runway, called “The Art of Fashion.” Carrie Bradshaw adored Roberto Cavalli, and regularly wore his animal print designs, or waxed poetically about his many virtues, on Sex and the City.

Many of the world’s most famous ladies, like Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, have worn truly iconic Roberto Cavalli pieces to ceremonies, parties, openings and events for decades. Cavalli wanted to design clothing that would make a woman feel gorgeous, and his clients chose his gowns until his name became a red carpet staple.

Of course his work had critics, all good work does, and though beloved to many, Roberto Cavalli was not for everyone. The glamor he could squeeze from any material, his craftsmanship and the level of detail in every design; the distinct look of a carefully ornamented design by Cavalli is unmistakable. As David Colman so succinctly wrote for the New York Times in 2004, “this is a man for whom zebra print is a neutral.”

In 2010 Roberto Cavalli (the brand) celebrated its fortieth birthday. Throughout the ‘aughts there were rumors about Cavalli selling his business, or a portion of it, or that he’d stop his licenses, or retire. And there were some financial issues, especially after the bubbles began to burst circa 08. After some back and forth, Clessidra SGR, an Italian private equity firm, in 2015. The brand was reorganized, issues with creditors resolved or restructured; it is running smoothly again and apparently generating profits.

Clessidra SGR’s purchase coincided with Cavalli stepping back. He would retire slowly and be replaced by Peter Dundas. In 2015, Dundas designed the first Roberto Cavalli collection not created by the company’s namesake. About a year and a half later, Dundas was succeeded by British fashion designer Paul Surridge. Since October of 2020, Fausto Puglisi has been creative director of Roberto Cavalli, designing each collection and generating buzz about his work and the ways in which it is connected to earlier collections by the company’s founder.

Though no cause of death was released when Cavalli’s brand announced his death on Friday, April 12, it does seem that he had been ill for some undisclosed length of time. His condition apparently deteriorated in the days before the couturier died at his Florence home.

Roberto Cavalli is survived by six children and his partner. He has friends, students, colleagues and fans all over the world. Nina Garcia, editor-in-chief of ELLE, summed up the couturier’s career brilliantly: “He defined the era of unrepentant maximalism.”