Roberto Cavalli, the Italian designer who built a fashion label out of exotic prints and a patented way of printing on leather, has died in Florence at 83.
His company said in a statement that he “was a natural artist and believed that everyone can discover the artist within themselves.” Cavalli was born in 1940 in a small Tuscan village. His grandfather, Giuseppe Rossi, was a celebrated artist of the Macchiaioli movement, with works shown at the Uffizi. His father was executed by German soldiers in 1944, when Cavalli was three, and his mother, a seamstress, moved the family to Florence. He began experimenting with textiles in 1957 while studying at the Academy of Art there.
From leather to jeans
In the early 1970s he patented a printing process for leather and opened a small shop, Limbo, in Saint-Tropez in 1972. It did well enough that the next year he was invited to show his leather goods in Florence’s Sala Bianca alongside Missoni, Krizia, Fendi and Basile. He launched his own label in 1970 with a debut collection in Paris that included a pink leather evening gown, and commissions from Hermès and Pierre Cardin followed.
Denim came next. His autumn/winter 1994 collection showed what is described as the first pair of sand-blasted jeans, and the following year he worked with Lycra to invent stretch jeans. They sold at once, and he launched a dedicated line, Cavalli Jeans, later renamed Just Cavalli. Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren had shopped at Limbo. In the 1990s David and Victoria Beckham, Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez brought in a new, affluent crowd.
The business behind the glamour
At its peak the group had almost 200 stores worldwide and sales of more than 710 million euros, enough for Cavalli to consider a stock market listing that never happened. He sold underwear, eyewear, footwear, watches and perfume, then homeware, pet attire, vodka, wine, restaurants and members’ clubs.
The finances were less tidy. In 2009 he dropped a plan to sell 30 percent of the business to the private equity firm Clessidra after the two sides disagreed on price. He thought the stake was worth 2 billion euros. The company had been hurt by unpaid royalties on Just Cavalli from a licensee, Ittierre, which went into government-backed bankruptcy. The Guardian reports the business began posting annual losses in 2014. A year later the family sold a 90% stake to Clessidra, reportedly valuing the company at €390m. The firm filed for bankruptcy protection in March 2019 and later that year was bought by Dubai-based Vision Investment Company, controlled by Hussain Sajwani, founder of Damac Properties. Damac is building a five-star Cavalli-branded hotel tower in Dubai.
Peter Dundas succeeded the founder in 2015, followed by Paul Surridge in 2017. Fausto Puglisi became creative director in October 2020. “It is the greatest honour of my career to work under your legacy,” Puglisi wrote after the death. Chief executive Sergio Azzolari said Cavalli’s legacy “remains a constant source of inspiration”.
Tributes
Giorgio Armani wrote that he could not imagine a vision of fashion more distant from his own, “yet I have always had enormous respect for him: Roberto was a true artist, wild and wonderful in his use of prints.” Victoria Beckham posted a photo of the two holding hands and wrote that he would “forever be an icon”. Model Adriana Lima called him a legend.
Cavalli lived as loudly as he designed. His main home was a 13-hectare Tuscan estate with a vineyard, racehorses and Ferraris, a menagerie that included parrots, iguanas and a monkey, and a superyacht named Freedom. “Excess is success” was one of his favorite sayings. He married Silvanella Giannoni in 1964 and had two children, then wed former Miss Universe contestant Eva Duringer in 1980. They had three children, and divorced in 2010. A sixth child, a son named Giorgio after his own father, was born to him and the Swedish model Sandra Nilsson.
