With luck, you might see his bright purple helicopter flying over the Tuscan skies. Or one of his Ferraris whizzing down via Tornabuoni, home of his elegant store and funky café. Or glimpse a limousine with dark tinted windows taking one of his celebrity guests, Sharon Stone, perhaps, or Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez or Lenny Kravitz, to a fantastic party at his villa in the hills near the city or his manor in the Chianti countryside, where he breeds racehorses. Design guru and fashion showman extraordinaire Roberto Cavalli continues to live in close symbiosis with Florence, the town where he was born 70 years ago.
Cavalli built his empire on the concept that his brand sells a ‘lifestyle.’ The woman he dresses is sexy and powerful with just that touch of transgression that sets her apart. He clads her in his bold, brightly coloured animal or flower-print underwear, then clothes and accessorises her with his shoes, belts, bags, jewellery, watches, eyewear and perfume. He decorates her home with his housewares and puts his chocolates, fine wines and his very own vodka on her table. He gives her the possibility to meet her friends at one of his cafés in Milan or Florence, and to dance the night away at his nightclubs in Florence or Dubai. He even attires her boyfriend or husband and children with his same signature look.
Nonetheless, during his remarkable 40-year career as a designer, Cavalli has experienced his share of entrepreneurial ups and downs. In 1960, after dropping out of the Florence Academy of Arts, he began printing designs on knitwear for a friend. Based on their success, he started his own t-shirt, jeans and leather design company. For a time, he worked for the Naples leatherwear designer Mario Valentino and for Hermès and Pierre Cardin, but after he perfected and patented a system for printing on leather, he decided to go it alone. He opened his boutique in Saint Tropez, where the French film star Brigitte Bardot was soon spotted wearing one of his slinky, close-fitting outfits. In 1972, he showed his first women’s collection, featuring his famous patchwork pants, at the Pitti Palace in Florence, and in 1974, he launched his first, albeit short-lived, menswear line, a segment of the market he did not venture into again until 1998.
However, by the 1980s, the mood in fashion had changed. Sober minimalism, the opposite of his glamorous flamboyance, now ruled the catwalks. For more than a decade, his label drifted in a kind of trendless limbo until, in the 1990s, Cavalli’s beautiful Austrian second wife and former Miss Universe contestant, Eva Duringer, who is his most trusted business partner, spurred him on to a spectacular comeback. Having devised a method to print on stretch denim, he presented his first sand-blasted jeans. In 1994, the collection he showed at Milan Fashion Week instantly appealed to a whole new generation of the rich and famous. At the same time, he aggressively began his conquest of the American market, culminating in 1999 with the opening of his Madison Avenue store.
Now, there are 101 Cavalli stores, including three mega-stores, and 2,500 other sale points for his luxury goods worldwide. In 2007, the group’s turnover was estimated at 700 million euro, and despite the global recession, its interests appear to be expanding.
Unexpectedly, in November 2002, Cavalli faced another challenge when Italian authorities charged him with tax fraud. The case dragged on for six years before Italy’s Supreme Court finally overturned an earlier verdict that had found him guilty and sentenced him (immediately suspended) to a little over a year in prison.
Undoubtedly, his enduring success in the fashion industry largely depends on the art and inspiration that flow in the veins of this urbanely handsome man, with his silver-grey mane of hair, tinted glasses and a cigar or cigarette never too far out of reach. In fact, his maternal grandfather, Giuseppe Rossi, was a Macchiaoli painter. However, Cavalli’s childhood was not an easy one after his father Giorgio was shot following a Nazi roundup of hostages during World War II. His mother Marcella struggled to bring up Cavalli and his sister alone. Twice married, Cavalli has two children from his first marriage and three from his second, now valued collaborators in the business.
Today, wherever Cavalli goes, he takes his digital camera with him in order to photograph nature. On his return to the showroom, he transforms the images into his unique prints or into startling combinations of materials because, as he once said, ‘fashion for me has to be about fun, life, vitality. We’re living in an age when some things aren’t so nice. So the world needs colour. It needs a little bit of extravagance and it needs to make you smile.’ We couldn’t agree more.
