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Designer Roberto Cavalli has died: a life between fashion and art

Fashion designer Roberto Cavalli died in Florence at the age of 83 after a long illness. He leaves behind six children, the youngest being Giorgio, just over a year old. Beside him in the last hours, as in the last fifteen years, his partner Sandra

12 April 2024

3' min read

Designer Roberto Cavalli , founder of the brand that bore his name, has died at 83 years old in Florence.

Born on 15 November 1940 in Florence, he grew up in a family of artists (his grandfather Giuseppe Rossi had been an exponent of the Tuscan Macchiaioli movement), and chose to study in his hometown, at the Istituto Statale d'Arte, specialising in textile decoration.

In 1970, he made his fashion debut in Paris, with his first Roberto Cavalli collection, where he showed his leather patchworks made in collaboration with Neapolitan designer Mario Valentino.

Two years later, he would parade in his native Florence, in Palazzo Pitti, the venue at that time for Italian pret-a-porter presentations, where he presented his artistic denims.

And even when the fashion system moved to the new nerve centre of Milan at the end of the 1970s, Cavalli decided to remain in Florence, in an almost silent period of his creativity, in which he lived outside the city, devoting himself to his family and his beloved horses.

But in the Nineties years something changed: 1994 saw the debut in Milan with the novelty of jeans aged thanks to a special sand-based wash, and above all the famous animalier prints, with which Cavalli would mark the fashion of that decade and the next, lace, transparencies, a highly recognisable style that carried the designer's name around the world. In those years Jennifer Lopez, Sharon Stone, Kate Moss are just some of the divas who adored the Cavalli style.

By the end of 2001, turnover was estimated at between LIT 300-350 billion, supported by the launch of numerous lines, from the children's collection to the Home line, accessories, perfumes, and the opening of boutiques in dozens of countries.

And it was 2002 when the Just Cavalli Club opened in Milan, the first club sign that marked the evolution of the brand in a lifestyle sense.

Roberto Cavalli, una storia per immagini
Photogallery34 foto

In 2007 Roberto Cavalli is also the first Italian designer to collaborate with H&M for its signature capsules. In 2015, however, Roberto Cavalli made an important decision: a few months after handing over creative leadership to Peter Dundas, he sold 90% of his company to the Clessidra fund, for 390 million euros, which in 2016 decided to move the company's headquarters back from Milan to Tuscany, in Osmannoro.

The brand is going through complex years, marked by another change at the creative helm, with Paul Surridge, and by ailing accounts.

However, the still much-loved Cavalli style in the Middle East made it possible to sign an important agreement with the Dubai-based real estate giant Damac, for the creation of hotels and residences designed by Cavalli in the Emirates.

In 2019 it is precisely Damac that will become the new owner of the brand and the company, which will be led from 2020 by general manager Ennio Fontana and at the creative level by Fausto Puglisi, who remembered him yesterday in a note issued by the company: "Dear Roberto, you are no longer physically with us but I know that I will always carry your spirit with me. To continue to work inspired by your legacy and to create for the brand you founded with such vision and style is the greatest honour of my career. Rest in peace, you will be missed, you are loved by so many that your name will live on, forever, a beacon for all, especially me."

Roberto Cavalli's life was also marked by the pain of missing his father, Giorgio, who was shot by the German army in 1944, when Roberto was only four years old.

And in his private life, he had two marriages: the first in his early twenties to Silvana Giannoni, with whom he had two children, but which ended shortly afterwards. Roberto Cavalli then remarried in 1980 to the Austrian model Eva Maria Düringer, whom he met at a beauty contest and who became his closest collaborator. From their union three more children were born, Rachele, Daniele and Robin. His partner was the Swedish model Sandra Nilsson.