.jpg)
Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest luxury news and insights, plus exclusive membership discounts.
“Missing the party? How can I miss the party? I am the party!” The dialogue delivered over the Milan Stock Exchange showspace public-address system was unmistakably the guttural growl of Roberto Cavalli. As Cavalli’s words faded, Mariacarla Boscono emerged in the same high-octane feathered dress she modelled when it first hit the runway back in 2004. The crowd (including Naomi Campbell) whooped. As six more OG Cavalli supers followed, that whooping only increased.
Wednesday night’s appropriately high-impact tribute to Cavalli, who died this April aged 83, was instigated by his successor and torchbearer Fausto Puglisi. Next month Puglisi will hit his four-year anniversary as creative director at the house Roberto founded back in 1972 — four years before Puglisi was even born. “He was so human. He had an enormous emotional range, and he was volatile and instinctive, and he was larger than life,” says Puglisi of Cavalli before the show. “Of course we had to pay tribute to him now, out of loyalty and love.”
During the late ’90s and noughties, Cavalli — who during the 1960s ran a store in Saint-Tropez named Limbo and from his Florentine studio pioneered techniques including printed leather and stretch denim — emerged as a turn-of-the-millennium apogee of unapologetic sexiness. Star turns on Sex and the City, and the patronage of superstars including Christina Aguilera, J Lo and Mel B helped to drive sales. Cavalli even struck a deal to model a chain of nightclubs in his image. All of this was enough to buy the designer a five-bedroom, iridescent purple yacht — the RC — that was for years a Cannes Film Festival fixture. And yet many in fashion were not won over, as Puglisi conceded: “He had so many critics about his idea of sexiness, his idea of flamboyance.”
Shortly after the last look of Wednesday’s tribute section — Eva Herzigová and a sectioned leather dress still made for an eyeball-melting combination 21 years later — Puglisi emerged with the full super septet (which included Boscono, Alek Wek, Isabeli Fontana, Natasha Poly, Joan Smalls, Karen Elson and Herzigová). He bowed in front of Eva, Cavalli’s widow, who sat front row. Mrs Cavalli stood, and was smothered in hugs before joining the last walk towards the photographers. Aside from its purpose as a touching tribute, the surprise super reunion augured the drop of a limited capsule based on the seven archival looks that went on sale immediately.
Only one of the original dresses shown again this week and used to inspire that capsule had been altered — by Puglisi’s own hand. He removed the original real fur trim and replaced it with faux, explaining: “The consciousness has changed between now and then. I would never use real fur, or real crocodile.”
That shift in values is relatively straightforward to adapt to; you simply substitute one material for another. However, the far more challenging societal differences between now and the period of Cavalli’s pomp are attitudes towards sex and gender. “In many ways part of the beauty and appeal of the brand back then would now be seen as politically incorrect; its sexiness, its unapologetic attitude, its boldness and immodesty,” says Puglisi. “Cavalli is very much about sex.”
This Friday marks another significant moment for the house: it will be 10 years since Cavalli and Eva — who was central to the design of the collections — took their last ever runway bow. That exit opened a stormy period in the house’s history. Peter Dundas was appointed Cavalli’s successor shortly afterwards, and then in April 2015, 90 per cent of the company was sold to Italian fund Clessidra. Local press reported that the deal valued the company at around €350 million, and that the Cavalli family retained just 10 per cent.
Dundas’s vision failed to take hold —- his vision of sexiness just didn’t land — and in 2017 the reins were handed to former Z Zegna designer Paul Surridge. The Englishman’s approach was less maximal, more cerebral, with this, too, failing to revitalise interest in the house. In November 2019 Clessidra bowed out, selling the brand to UAE businessman Hussain Sajwani’s firm Damac through his vehicle Auriel Investments. Damac has since developed a $550 million residential skyscraper in Dubai named Cavalli Tower that’s due for completion next year. Then, in October 2020, Puglisi was appointed as creative director of the brand.
Sales of ready-to-wear have since more than doubled, he and the company indicated without providing figures. There are currently 17 standalone Roberto Cavalli boutiques in operation — Puglisi says that high-spending vacation hotspots such as Ibiza and Saint-Tropez are particularly strong performers — and two more (in Los Angeles and Dubai) are set to open before the end of this year. Womenswear currently accounts for 70 per cent of apparel sales and direct-to-consumer channels (which the company is pushing to grow) account for around half of the business. The rest is wholesale.
Puglisi believes the path to further growth for Cavalli is to continue its return to the boisterous exuberance that is core to the brand’s identity, while working to recalibrate the power dynamic these Cavalli clothes play to. He said: “In fashion we live in a pseudo-intellectual bubble that’s unattached to the real world. But if I’m in a restaurant or a club in London, New York, LA, Miami or Shanghai it will be full of beautiful and successful women who are conscious of their physiques, their fitness and their beauty. They don’t necessarily want to seduce or be seduced, but they want to have fun and look powerful and, yes, sexy.”
Puglisi added that away from the house-standard attention-grabbing gowns, one fast-growing segment is printed jeans and patterned silk shirts. “The new Cavalli women who are coming to us want to wear the clothes to please themselves. They are the new party.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
From bike lane to boardroom: An interview with Johanna Parv
Glenn Martens steps down as creative director of Y/Project
‘The instinct to empower is the same’: Astrid Andersen on her return to fashion
