Women go back to their own instincts falling in love
with the new star of Italian fashion

By Elisabetta De Dominis
“IF THEY LOVE ME, they follow me around." This is Roberto Cavalli, this is his M.O. And women follow him like bacchantes possessed by the god himself, Bacchus. Tall or thin or short or fat they slip into their luminous fabrics and feel transformed, more beautiful, younger, more sensual, naturally divine. Because the prints, the colors, the shapes of his clothes are a hymn to nature. After years of being caged in styles that constricted them in the roles of good girl friend, wife, mother, manager, they've seized back their wild nature. And for the first time in the history of fashion they're dressing on their own instincts instead of how the social canon wants them to. “Okay! I'm on my way to the office now! But I'm going as a tiger! Because my heart is in the jungle with the flowers and the butterflies and the wild animals but I'm the tiger, I'm the strongest.” Cavalli's secret is having dressed woman in freedom and strength, a psychological charge that changes her stance and behavior. A precious gift, in the jungle of the city. But it wasn't easy for the designer: for years he had to fight against women's fashions soaked in grey monotony and stiffened with masculine cuts. There were no rainbows, no softnesses, no infinite blues of the sea or serpent scales turning colors, no poppy reds and no agile jaguars.

Cavalli galloped over worlds real and imaginary photographing and dreaming, gathering flowers and monkeys and parrots, but women only dared wear him on vacation. He was selling in boutiques in St. Bart and St. Tropez but in Milan? No, it would be flaky for a woman to go to work with drops of water dangling, strands of grass sprouting from her jeans. Then about five/six years ago someone started to rebel, attracted by those prints because they reminded her of the earthly paradise, of when she was Eve. Eve, who adores snakes, is the other half of Cavalli's apple. Not only because she is his wife and splendid muse, but because she's the one who knew how to bridle his genius and set up his studio.

Roberto's inventions become reality in the hands of Eve, to the point where you can't tell where the dream ends and real life begins anymore. For this couple the imaginary world has become possible, maybe because they dreamt it so hard, and consecrated their entire selves to their work. There are evanescent, untouchable tablecloths on Eve's tables at the parties she organizes in Sardinia, Florence or Milan, and her guests are given napkins made of precious silks, and spotted cushions to lounge upon. When the party's over the laws of nature prevail: one time the guests took all the stuff home with them. Roberto laughed contentedly: "That means they appreciated it."

On October 16th the "Just Cavalli Café" will be opening in Milan, at Torre Branca in the Parco Sempione, an after-dinner bar and restaurant. Here you'll find the Cavalli atmosphere of hospitality and their exquisite, imaginative cuisine. In Florence, Cavalli has transformed the pastry shop "Giacosa" on elegant Via Tornabuoni into a boutique, and he's keeping all the gourmet delicacies and inventing new ones, like spotted chocolates with animal patterns from his designs printed on them. In America the Roberto Cavalli boutique is in New York, on Fifth. The only meat there right now is the clothes that the women are tearing from each others' hands as if it were a matter of survival. So violently that to satisfy their hunger Cavalli's thinking of opening in Miami and Los Angeles soon too. Because despite September 11th, his clothes are more in demand than ever. And it's not hard to understand: "My styles mean escape, seduction, the joy of life. I love woman and I want her to be sure of her charms and to value her beauty. I believe every woman desires to be sexy and mysterious at the same time. To make her like a goddess I steal mysteries from nature: the elegance of the giraffe, the sinuousness of the serpent, the pride of the wild beast."

And what is woman going to look like in the summer of 2003? “She'll have the changing reflections of the tortoise, dragons and Chinese flowers will be wound around her hips, which will be barely covered with microscopic miniskirts, or she'll be in a wrap of waving silk flowing down from her shoulders, bordered with the red of the fox.”

But Roberto, do you realize you're the only designer who has been able to create a new and unmistakeable style, before the end of the century, and that at this point everyone's imitating it? He smiles knowingly: “Life is a great adventure, but one shouldn't take it too seriously.”