Roberto Cavalli Fashion Line With Jeans

Fashion Designer

United States • Milan

15 November 1940

Cavalli is a native of the Tuscan capital of Florence, born on Nov 15 1940. His father, Giorgio, was a mine surveyor by profession, and his mother, Marcella, a tailor. Marcella was the girl of creative person Giuseppe Rossi, a member of the Macchiaoli grouping of painters in Italy. The Macchiaoli movement was an offshoot of French Impressionists, and works past Cavalli's grandfather are among those that hang in Florence's esteemed Uffizi Museum.

When Italy was fatigued into Globe State of war II, military units from Nazi Federal republic of germany arrived in Florence, and Cavalli'south father was slain. "Something happened between the partisans and the Germans and my begetter was involved," Cavalli told a writer for London's Evening Standard, Nick Foulkes, "so my mother took intendance of me and my sis. Information technology made my grapheme more deep, more than stiff."

In 1957, Cavalli enrolled at Florence'due south Academy of Art with plans to either follow in his grandfather's footsteps or become an architect. He began dating a fellow art student, nonetheless, and those plans took a detour. "She was a classic, very pretty Italian daughter," Cavalli said of his first wife in the Evening Standard interview with Foulkes. "Her parents were dreaming for her to marry a doctor or a lawyer and I was just a poor art–school pupil." Roberto married his beginning wife Silvanella Giannoni in 1964 and had his first two children. "I met a girl, the first girl I loved, and I married her with the get-go money I got," he told u.s. in 2011. "Nosotros first made love the night we married, after knowing each other for four years, and we had my first girl 9 months and ten days later!" After 10 years of marriage, Silvanella and Roberto divorced in 1974.

His fortunes improved considerably in 1960, when a friend was launching a knitwear line and asked him to paw–paint some of the sweaters. They proved a hitting, and Cavalli began researching the art of textile printing in earnest. He started making T–shirts and jeans with a luxe–hippie await that caught on with immature Italians. For a time, he worked for Mario Valentino, the Naples designer known for his well–crafted leathers and suedes. While at that place, he recalled in the interview with the Evening Standard 'due south Foulkes, "I had this thought to print on leather. I used glove peel from a French tannery, and when I started to print, I saw it was possible to make evening gowns in leather in pink—unbelievable." Having patented his leather printing technique, he earned commissions from other blueprint houses including Hermès and Pierre Cardin.

Cavalli opened his first bazaar in Saint-Tropez in 1972, foreseeing the potential of the fishing hamlet as a desirable destination for the fashion elite.

Cavalli formally launched his own women'due south line in 1972 with an improvident event at Florence's Pitti Palace. His course–plumbing fixtures, vividly colored clothes quickly became a hit with trend–setting Europeans of the more idle class. One of the first celebrities to wear his designs was the French motion-picture show star Brigitte Bardot, and soon his eponymous boutiques were providing discotheque–wear for the jet–prepare crowd of the 1970s.

Later, Cavalli's over–the–top designs would sometimes be compared to those of a fellow Italian, the tardily Gianni Versace, whose proper name became synonymous with embellished extravagance in the 1980s. "It would be easy to say that Cavalli is the new Versace," asserted Foulkes in the Evening Standard article, "except that when he was alive it would have been more accurate to call Versace the new Cavalli." Similarly, New York Times writer Ruth La Ferla claimed that Cavalli's "feathered evening clothes, rhinestone–encrusted jeans, and python pants were precursors to the rock 'n' roll fashions of Versace and Dolce & Gabbana."

During the 1980s, however, Cavalli seemed to lose his ground in fashion equally other Italians, amid them the Milan–based Versace and Giorgio Armani, began to proceeds a strong international post-obit. Cavalli remained in Florence, by contrast, and did not have office in the seasonal presentations of new collections for spring/summer and fall/wintertime that were known as Milan Way Week. Moreover, his glitzy clothes were lost in the parade of more than minimalist–chic wear that began to dominate manner in the 1990s. "Cavalli refused to adapt his way," wrote Vernon in the Observer, "and his label seemed destined to languish forever in a fashiony no–man'southward–country, drip–fed life back up by a dwindling trickle of ageing, tasteless, mindlessly loaded Euro trash."

C avalli'southward second wife, Eva, is credited as the behind–the–scenes strength in the renaissance of his blueprint house in the 1990s. He met the former Miss Austria when she was 18 years old and a contestant in the 1977 Miss Universe pageant in Santo Domingo, Dominican Democracy. At the fourth dimension, Cavalli was 37, the divorced begetter of two, and a pageant judge, and the blonde Eva Duringer had been named in an unofficial pre–pageant poll every bit the forepart–runner for the crown. Instead she was the showtime–runner up to Miss Trinidad and Tobago, the first black Miss Universe, and won Cavalli's heart. They wednesday and began a family unit, and equally their children grew more than independent in the early on 1990s, Eva gear up her sights on improving her husband's business fortunes. "I was thinking maybe to cease," her husband confessed to Time International author Lauren Goldstein. "Merely then Eva became interested then I started—for her—to involve myself again."

Cavalli'due south career entered an exciting new stage at the start of the Nineties. Devising a method of printing patterns onto stretch denim, in 1988 Cavalli launched a jeans line and presented his offset printed jeans, that boosted his revenues considerably. He began showing his dressier line at Milan's Fashion Week in 1994, and soon his racy, abbreviated chiffon dresses and signature zebra–print items were appealing to an entirely new generation of celebrities—some of whom were around the same historic period equally his company. They included singers Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera, British soccer star David Beckham, and rap mogul Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. "The glory connection is very important," Cavalli explained to WWD 's Eric Wilson. "It's more important to me personally than to anyone else because information technology makes me experience of import. Sometimes in Italy y'all don't know how of import you are. It's important because information technology's adrenaline, and that's what starts creativity."

Cavalli'southward clothes likewise caught on with a more difficult segment to win over. What Independent Sunday writer Rebecca Lowthorpe termed "the Cavalli cult" included "not simply every large rock, pop, and rap star, from Madonna to Mary J. Blige, and the entire cast of Sex and the Urban center, but, strangely, on fashion folk—traditionally the most resistant of all to colourful, busy apparel." A Cavalli dress even became a plot point on Sex and the City, when Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie character was forced to make clean out her overstuffed closet to make room for her boyfriend's clothes. Their battle over space later escalates, and she tells him, "It'southward Roberto Cavalli! I threw it out and I love it. What more practice you want?"

Cavalli began courting the American market place in earnest in the belatedly 1990s. He began advertising in magazines like Cosmopolitan, and hired a management team to work with top U.s. retailers that carried his line, like Bergdorf Goodman. A Roberto Cavalli store with a posh Madison Avenue address opened in September of 1999. The effort paid off, and by 2002 Cavalli'southward United States sales had tripled in simply two years. Some of it, he believed, could be credited to a weariness with the somber minimalist shades that had continued to dominate women's styles. Equally he insisted to People writer Galina Espinoza, "My fashion has become a success considering other designers have become so monotonous."

Cavalli has been the target of occasional criticism for what some consider an excess of fur in his collections. His men's collection, re–launched in 1999, features clothes as equally spirited every bit his women's line. The first endeavor, back in 1974, was not a success, he recalled in an interview with Luisa Zargani of the Daily News Record. "The collection was likewise feminine, too colorful and artistic. I was not happy about it at all. I had tall and androgynous women walk downwardly the track wearing men'south wearing apparel, merely the concluding issue only made no sense." He retains a abrupt eye for what a certain segment of the female populus wants to wear. "For a long time, designers tried to apparel women like men," he told Wall Street Journal writer Cecilie Rohwedder. "I changed that. I try to bring out the feminine, sexy side that every adult female has inside her."

Confirming his condition as a pioneer in the denim world, Roberto Cavalli launched Cavalli Jeans (after renamed Only Cavalli) in 2000. Cavalli'southward sportswear and jeans line, Just Cavalli, is also the name of a Milan restaurant that he owns. He designs housewares—not surprisingly, empress–red tones and zebra prints predominate—under the proper name Roberto Cavalli Casa, and also has accessories, fragrance, footwear, swimsuit, and eyewear licenses. He allocates money for marketing efforts only reluctantly, he told Lowthorpe in the Contained Lord's day interview. "I never liked to spend too much on ad," he asserted. "All my life, I thought mode should never be advertised like the washing machines."

In Dec 2004 Cavalli sponsored 'Wild: Fashion Untamed' at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art's Costume Found in New York, an exhibition that examined the human fascination with animal skins, and animate being references in clothing throughout history. "It's not really that I love to utilise animal impress, I like everything that is of nature," Roberto told united states of america in 2011. "I started to capeesh that fifty-fifty fish have a fantastic coloured 'dress', and then does the snake, and the tiger. I offset(ed) to empathise that God is really the all-time designer, so I started to copy God."

For its first re-blueprint in 25 years, Playboy called on Cavalli to vamp upwardly its famous bunny costumes in June 2005. "(Roberto) likewise embraces the adept life, inspires an aspirational lifestyle for a jet-set oversupply and of course celebrates beautiful women," playboy CEO Christie Hefner enthused.

Gear up in a snakeskin-covered bottle, Roberto Cavalli Vodka was launched in September 2005. Followed past wines, restaurants and members' clubs, these brand expansions confirmed Cavalli as the get-to designer for an aristocracy lifestyle.

2007 saw the designer collaborate with some of the music industry'south leading female artists. Christina Aguilera and Jennifer Lopez both asked the designer to create costumes for major concerts, while the Spice Girls wore a custom-made Cavalli wardrobe for their global reunion tour.

That November, Cavalli launched his first high-street collection for H&M. In the advertizing campaign, shot by Terry Richardson, the designer asked, "How tin can I miss the party? I am the political party," before celebrating with models Erin Wasson and Jessica Stam in his Florentine villa. "Fashion tin exist glamour and fantasy, and at its best can even make reality a little more fun," H&M'southward marketing director told us at the time. "Wearing Cavalli'south creations is all about that." The collection sold out within hours of launching.

Another opportunity to collaborate presented itself in July 2008, as the house of Cavalli designed a limited edition Diet Coke canteen. In 2009 Cavalli appeared on The Martha Stewart Show and spoke for the first time well-nigh a desire to succeed in the photography earth. "My dream in the almost hereafter is to create a big exhibition that would showcase my (photographs) from Africa and other exotic places. I used to shoot discipline for my prints and my passion has evolved."

Cavalli historic twoscore years of business in 2010. The company was named the number one women's style characterization on the Luxury Brand Status Index, released a celebratory coffe-table book and held an extravagant Parisian political party attended by Heidi Klum, Kylie Minogue, Naomi Campbell and Taylor Swift.

In March 2012 Cheryl Cole became Cavalli'south latest celebrity muse, wearing a custom-fabricated outfit for a performance on UK goggle box show The Voice. "Cheryl is the perfect Cavalli woman, strong, confident and sexy," the designer told the states. "Nosotros used the signature Cavalli Fantasia and leopard prints to create a testify-stopping outfit."

Oct 2012 Cavalli'due south launched the 2nd high-street line, this time for Australian Target. Georgia May Jagger is also confirmed to be the face up of the Just Cavalli perfumes from March 2013.

The designer is reluctant to retire, despite all that he has achieved. "Well, sometimes I say when I'1000 completely tired… simply I experience a lot of responsibleness to my fans: what they expect from me," he told Faddy in 2011. "They wait a lot, only at the same time fashion is a part of my Dna. I could never alive without it."

Text Courtesy: Vogue.co.u.k., NotableBiographies.com

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