ROBERTO CAVALLI

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BY // GEORGINA WILSON-POWELL

AN ITALIAN PASSION FOR FASHION, COLOURS AND LIFE AT ITS BRIGHTEST, ROBERTO CAVALLI IS A MAN ON A MISSION, TO MAKE THE WORLD SHINE. HIS CAVALLI EMPIRE INCLUDES EVERYTHING FROM CLOTHES TO CLUBS, BEVER-AGES TO BEDDING, FROM NEW YORK TO KUWAIT. THIS SUMMER HE MAKES DUBAI THE FOCAL POINT, BY OPENING THE FIRST CAVALLI CLUB IN THE CITY

A BEAUTIFUL WORLD

A long-time favourite in the Middle East, Roberto Cavalli has been

creating the most flambouyant, tech-nicolour outfits since the 1960s, taking a riot of textures and fabrics, such as leather, silk, animal skin and fur and melding them into something new, something fabulous and something incredibly popular.

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Born in Florence in 1940, Cavalli is the grandson of famous Florentine

artist, Giuseppe Rossi, a painter in the ‘Macchiaiolo’ movement.

It was in an effort to emulate his beloved grandfather that Cavalli entered the city’s Academy of Art. He was soon besotted with the possibili-ties of textiles, rather than paint, and developed a groundbreaking tech-nique that enabled him to print complicated designs onto lightweight leather.

From his very first screen printed T-

shirts (which allowed h i m

to buy a much-envied convertible Fiat 1500) to his first ‘collection’ in 1972, Cavalli has always seen fashion as an art form, a 3D aesthetic. It was this love of art and beauty in its most gen-eral sense that saw him beloved by the hippy generation of the 1960s, with his now classic patchwork coats. He was then embraced by the most influential people of the 1970s who recognised his joie de vivre and his passion, not just for the clothes themselves, but also for their ability to enhance the wear-er’s natural beauty. For Cavalli catwalk shows became exhibition spaces, mod-els became walking canvases and all of womankind became his muse.

The designer has a couple of phrases, that are repeated time and time again, through interviews going

back decades and again in his most recent interview in Dubai; that ‘he loves beauty’, ‘he loves life.’ For him the two are intrinsically linked. Even at 69, Cavalli has the same spark and excitement for the world around him as a child, and it is this love of life that expresses itself in his work through an unashamed use of vibrant colour that most people, most designers even, would shy away from.

This explosion of colour found a natural home back in the 1970s with the backdrop of the shimmering tur-quoise blues of St. Tropez. Cavalli’s reputation as an A-list designer was cemented when Brigitte Bardot walked barefoot up the red carpet at Cannes Film Festival in one of his creations.

This connection to the bold and

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the beautiful has continued throughout his career, Cavalli counts Hollywood actresses such as Sharon Stone, Penelope Cruz and Gwyneth Paltrow not just as clients but also friends, along with singers such as Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce whilst Victoria Beckham has endlessly championed him. His daring (and sometimes reveal-ing) style is favoured by his celebrity clients, relying on the show-stopping designs to reward them with acres of media coverage, something that has heightened global awareness of the Cavalli brand massively over the last two decades.

Since the 1990s Cavalli has risen to become more favoured than he was in the 1970s, endlessly interlinked with the worlds of acting, modeling and

ture, seeming something for the first time even after nearly seven decades of residency. For him it is both an influ-ence and an inspiration. Although he spends part of the year in New York, ‘for the energy and the craziness’, he will always be a Florentine.

Family is also intrinsic to Cavalli, as it is to many Italians, and his is a family business. His wife, Eva, handles the day to day running of the empire, overseeing the advertising and brand image that Cavalli portrays through its use of supermodels such as Kate Moss. His son runs the local vineyard that produces exclusive Cavalli wine, Cavalli Tenuta Delgi Dei, that has been lauded by wine critics.

Having begun with his first boutique in St Tropez in 1972, the Cavalli empire now stretches around the world, with high end boutiques in America, Europe and the Middle East. It is a testament to his popularity in the latter region that Cavalli has stores in the UAE, Kuwait, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, a portfolio that many other designers could only dream of.

Moving on from the stores, he has developed a pret-a-porter range, Just Cavalli, as well as adding eyewear, beachwear, watches, handbags and accessories to his name, cementing the family business as a global brand rather than just a fashion label.

It is this brand identity that forms the basis of what Cavalli has recently launched in Dubai. Cavalli Club is the result “of a long standing dream” of his in the “city of the future.” As a designer that has always been forward thinking and used revolutionary technology to push his creations to the limit, it’s no surprise then that he chose Dubai as the first city to launch his ‘lifestyle-con-cept club’ in a nod of recognition to the city’s remarkable evolution into a truly 21st century metropolis.

“Dubai is a fantastic city and it is the future. The Cavalli Club is a big event for me, a dream that has been realised and Dubai has allowed that to happen for me. I am no longer young unfortunately but this is my biggest creative pleasure. We are walking in the future and I love it.”

“BEAUTIFUL THINGS COST MONEY. EVERY-THING IN THE CLUB WAS CUSTOM MADE AND SO COMPLEX, THERE WAS NO TIME LINE AND NO BUDGET.”

music. His love of diamante and appli-qué, embellishing the smallest thing until it glitters and shines and attracts the spotlight has seen him create out-fits for music stars like the Spice Girls, Britney Spears and Madonna. His lack of restraint when it comes to fashion has found a niche with the echelons of the fabulous and famous but also with anyone who believes that fashion is about fun, about self-expression and a jubilant love of the ‘more is more’ approach to life.

Roberto Cavalli is synonymous with living life to the extreme, indulging in passions no matter what they are. He lives a life that most of us could only dream of and some of us could not even imagine. Everything around him is reflective of the passion for colour that exudes through his creations. Even his superyacht (still often found at Cannes) is bright metallic purple, as is his heli-copter, for which he is a qualified pilot.

As much as the designer might seem to have his head in the fashion clouds, there is also a strong tie to his family and to his hometown that is unshakable. A child of Florence, Cavalli lives in a villa in the surround-ing countryside and still has a studio in the medieval town. He loves nothing more than to amble through Florence, looking at the 700 year-old architec-

Page 24: Roberto Cavalli; page 25 from left: one of his designs on the catwalk; Cavalli Club in Dubai; page 26: the designer with the Spice Girls; page 27: Cavalli‘s version of flower power.

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There’s a lot of ‘love’ when Cavalli talks. He is not backward at coming forward about what he likes or doesn’t like. His fiery Italian passion has not been dulled by age and experience, only stoked,

“Arab women love my fashion, they are some of my biggest fans in the world. Fashion is a dream and Dubai makes this dream real.”

At a cost of $30 million, many would have baulked at the physical cost of the Cavalli Club dream, but not Cavalli,

“Beautiful things cost money. Everything in the club has been custom -made and was so complex that there was no time line and no budget.”

A restaurant, café and shop, every last detail was planned and chosen by Cavalli himself, using kilometres of strings of Swarovski diamonds, acres of leopard and zebra hide. It reflects his desire to enshrine beauty in deca-dence. Not only can you sit, drink and look at Cavalli products you can also buy an entire range of Cavalli home accessories, furnishings and lines that mean his look can be recreated in your own home.

“With my fashion, you really have to love life and live the style. Colours mean life for me and this is my new concept of living life with happiness and freedom. My colour is the colour of peace.”

Known for his quasi-philosophi-cal musings on anything at any given moment, the designer does reveal what makes a Cavalli woman,

“Beauty and personality are two dif-ferent things. Beauty is beauty, person-ality is what I prefer. People who have more personality are more aggressive, more Cavalli. I don’t choose them but they choose me.”

Cavalli could sit back and survey his empire, a multicolour web of busi-nesses but he has no intention of stop-ping. Famed as much for his spirit as his designs, he’s already looking to open Cavalli Clubs in Moscow and Abu Dhabi; then there are collections to design, celebrities to dress and dinner parties to be thrown. Cavalli himself admits, “I love to be loved”, and it seems the world has no intention of falling out of love with him.

JOIN THE CLUBROBERTO CAVALLI’S BUSINESS EMPIRE INCLUDES: Roberto Cavalli Just Cavalli clothing Just Cavalli Eyewear Just Cavalli Beachwear Just Cavalli Time Just Cavalli Timewear Class Roberto Cavalli Roberto Cavalli Angels and

Demons (childrenwear) Roberto Cavalli Newborn Cavalli Vodka Cavalli Tenuta Degli Dei (wine)

“FOR CAVALLI CATWALK SHOWS BECAME EXHIBI-TION SPACES, MODELS BECAME WALKING CAN-VASES AND ALL OF WOMANKIND BECAME HIS MUSE.”