They don’t make fashion designers like Roberto Cavalli any more, perhaps that’s a good thing

Roberto Cavalli, the larger than leopard print perma-tanned Italian, who died on Friday night, aged 83, was the kind of fashion designer you don’t encounter so much these days. His singular style was nothing short of decadent and he stole his best ideas from nature, with animal print everywhere. “I started to appreciate that even fish have a fantastic coloured ‘dress’, so does the snake, and the tiger. I start[ed] to understand that God is really the best designer, so I started to copy God.”

His fashion shows in Milan, usually in the evening accompanied by a glass of champagne, were overtly, obviously glamorous. Super-tanned, super-slim models, fabric slashed around flesh, heels high and hair glossy. One featured a flaming ring of (real) fire, placed inside a pop-up tent during a hot Milanese day which was a literal blistering heat-fest. It was pure fantasy fur-coat-never-bother-with-knickers stuff, which fitted his heyday moment during the late Nineties and Noughties, where for a while he was the maestro to whom women turned to for high-octane, flashy notice-me red carpet moments. Victoria Beckham’s Baden-Baden Wag era would have been nothing without his wardrobe contributions; she even walked in one of his creations — a slashed gown in oceanic green and blue — at a Monte Carlo charity fashion show in 2005, as well as bringing along the entire Spice Girl gang to one of his menswear shows in 2008. 

Queen of bling Jennifer Lopez was also a fan; her boho-fabulous looks (those floppy hats and slinky kaftans) were all his, which gave the vibe of a bacchanalian Saint-Tropez yacht party wherever you were in the world.

At his peak there was no expense spared, as he invited glamorous celebrities (including Sharon Stone, Kylie Minogue and Cara Delevingne) and magazine editors (something any title where Cavalli advertised were beckoned to do) to recline on his five bedroom, French-Riviera-moored superyacht bedecked with leopard print furnishings (obvs), Cavalli crockery (also leopard print) and his own brand of vodka. Cavalli was a lifestyle which those brash enough could lose themselves in.

When he revamped his Sloane Street store, the after-party was held at Battersea Power Station (then very much in its pre-glow-up era). Inside the walls had been covered in leopard print, tables were piled high with acres of antipasti shipped over from Italy, and Eve sang to a Cavalli-cocktailed-up crowd, which included Ronnie Wood and girl band The Saturdays.

Cavalli, ever the character, wrote up his diary of the occasion for the Standard: “After the party, I tell you, I will cry for 15 minutes. I suffer from claustrophobia so it sometimes gets too much and I have to call for my nurse and she will calm me down with some pills.”

Cavalli’s own personal life was as colourful as his barely there swimwear. The thrice-married Florentine-born designer met his second wife, Eva (who worked alongside him for years), while a judge at a 1977 Miss Universe contest (she was Miss Austria); three children later they divorced in 2010. Cavalli moved on to Swedish ex-Playboy model, 38-year-old Sandra Nilsson, who gave birth to a son, his sixth child, last year.

Cavalli’s aesthetic and outlook was very much of its pre-Me Too era, where women were endlessly draped across men as accessories, speaking only to elicit coos of glamour and protestations over how comfortable a spindly stiletto heel could be. His label was an extension of himself — and since he sold it in 2014, its revolving door of designers has never quite captured the spirit he once had. Perhaps, however, that’s for the best.