Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli dies aged 83

Roberto Cavalli, the Italian designer who made his mark on the fashion world with glamorous and unique animal prints, has died aged 83. His brand confirmed the news in a statement released on social media this Friday afternoon (12), highlighting that Cavalli “lived life with love”.

“Roberto Cavalli’s legacy will live on through his creativity,” the statement continues, “his love of nature and his family, which he cherished so much.”

Cavalli was born in Florence in 1940. His grandfather, Giuseppe Rossi, was a renowned painter; Cavalli followed in his footsteps by enrolling at the Florence Academy of Art, where he began experimenting with painting, patchwork and textiles.

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Over time, he developed an innovative leather printing technique, which earned him commissions from Hermès and Pierre Cardin, and set him on a creative path built on an ostentatiously extravagant aesthetic.

“Fashion is part of our life. When you wake up in the morning you say: “What do I have to wear to look beautiful, fantastic, sexy, special?”' Cavalli told CNN in an interview in 2008. “That's the reason I love being a fashion designer, because I can use it to measure your mood, your life.”

Cavalli presented his first collection in Paris in 1970, before debuting on the catwalks in Florence and Milan in 1972. That same year, he opened his first boutique in Saint-Tropez, a French coastal city that would become an international symbol of glamor and luxury. .

In 1980, Cavalli married Austrian model Eva Maria Düringer, who joined his company as creative director. Cavalli served as a judge at the 1977 Miss Universe pageant, where Düringer competed as Miss Austria. The duo had three children – Cavalli already had two from his first marriage – and remained together for three decades. He welcomed his sixth child with his partner Sandra Nilsson in 2023.

In the mid-1990s, Cavalli revolutionized the world of jeans with a series of innovations, including stretch jeans, which he invented by adding Lycra to the fabric. Along with animal prints and leather intarsia, denim became a central element of his signature style, leading to the establishment of a younger offshoot brand, Just Cavalli, in 1998.

In a talk at Oxford University in 2013, Cavalli explained his passion for wild animal patterns, which he wore on everything from jeans to red carpet dresses: “I love nature. Animals have the best dresses. God made them so well dressed. Women like these designs, they feel natural in them,” he said. Cavalli sponsored a 2004 exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art titled “WILD: Fashion Untamed,” which the museum described as showing “man's obsession with animalism expressed through clothing.”

In the 2000s, Cavalli opened his first coffee shop in Florence and the Just Cavalli club in Milan, which became a point of the city's famous nightlife. He was one of the first designers, in 2007, to launch a street collection, with H&M, as well as expanding into home and interior items. Among even more diversified ventures, he launched a vodka brand in the US in 2005.

Cavalli retired from his brand in 2015, choosing designer Peter Dundas to succeed him as creative director. Dundas stepped down after just three seasons and was succeeded by Paul Surridge, who remained until 2019. In the same year, after a period of financial difficulties which led to bankruptcy, the business was acquired by a Dubai-based private investment company, which has since hired designer Fausto Puglisi for its fashion collections and branched out into real estate and hotel developments under the Cavalli brand.

Puglisi paid tribute to the designer in the caption of the brand's Instagram post.

“Dear Roberto, you may no longer be physically here with us, but I know I will always feel your spirit with me. It is the greatest honor of my career to work under your legacy and create for the brand you founded with so much vision and style,” wrote Puglisi. “Rest in peace, we will miss you, and you are loved by so many that your name will continue to be a beacon of inspiration to others, and especially to me.”