Roberto Cavalli, the Fashion Designer That Made Maximalism Cool

Roberto Cavalli, the Italian designer who made a reputation for himself because the couturier to the rock ‘n roll St. Tropez set and who died this week at age 83, lived as he designed: in his personal Wild Kingdom of parrots, Persian cats, monkeys, racehorses and various toys (Ferraris, a helicopter). He based his personal model in 1970 and nearly from the start liked zebra, giraffe, leopard and lynx; tiger stripes and leopard spots, and put them not simply on the runway however on his poolside loungers and bike seats — usually all on the similar time.

His animal prints didn’t all the time originate from nature however from his personal creativeness, chimeras of unique skins that telegraphed extra, intercourse and aspiration. He roamed additional afield, in fact — into lace, sequins, studs and denim — but it surely was his love of an over-the-top sartorial menagerie that made his title. If Gianni Versace was the id of Italian trend, Mr. Cavalli made it roar, hitting mass saturation within the late nineties as an antidote to the minimalism of Jil Sander and Helmut Lang.

He stepped into the vacuum created by the homicide of Mr. Versace in 1997, was additional buoyed by the frothy inventory market, and shortly, Paris Hilton was carrying him. So was Candace Bushnell, creator of “Intercourse and the Metropolis.” Victoria Beckham was a fan throughout her Posh Spice period. Little surprise he was the principle sponsor of the 2004 present on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork’s Costume Institute: “Wild: Trend Untamed” — or that Ben Stiller wore Mr. Cavalli’s designs for “Zoolander,” Mr. Stiller’s trend satire.

PETA would have been horrified (protestors crashed a show in 2005), and the largest trend magazines held their noses somewhat, however celebrities flocked like migrating birds in his brightly branded plumage to Mr. Cavalli’s exhibits and modernist property outdoors Florence. There he performed host to all of them, lord of the leopard print jungle.