When I was 25 I bought my first pair of Just Cavalli Jeans and even after I gained weight I kept them for almost 10 years, just because they were so amazing.
Roberto Cavalli showed his first collection of printed leather gowns in 1970 and has since built a desirable lifestyle empire. Exotic elegance, wild prints and bohemian glamour are inherent in every collection and his seductive cuts have provided everyone from Jennifer Lopez to Victoria Beckham with red-carpet drama.
With his personal take on denim in the eighties as part of his youth line, Just Cavalli, Roberto is a designer of both substance and style, having made cutting-edge developments in textile technology throughout his career. Often seen surrounded by beautiful women, Cavalli's lavish lifestyle may lead people to consider him as the archetypal Italian playboy, but he has been happily married for over 30 years to former beauty queen Eva Duringer, with whom he has three children.
At the age of 77, Roberto Cavalli is still active as the creative director of menswear and ambassador for his own brand and maintains an extravagant lifestyle at his Tuscan estate, with pools and a vineyard, a stable of racehorses - the jockeys wear leopard-print Cavalli silks - and a vast collection of gadgets: Ferraris, a helicopter and a 138-foot, iridescent purple yacht. He is the embodiment of the extravagance that he sells.
When asked about retiring, he replied: "Well, sometimes I say that I will when I'm completely tired - but I feel a lot of responsibility to my fans: what they expect from me. They expect a lot but, at the same time, fashion is part of my DNA. I could never live without it."
Timeline
Roberto Cavalli was born in Florence in 1940. His grandfather, Giuseppe Rossi, introduced him to art when he was a little boy, and he later studied at the local art school, specialising in textile prints. He spent years perfecting his prints.
In the early 1970s he invented a method of printing on leather, quickly attracting the attention of fashion houses such as Hermés and Pierre Cardin, both of which hired him to create prints for them.
For its first re-design in 25 years, Playboy magazine called on Cavalli to vamp up its famous bunny costumes in June 2005. "[Roberto] too embraces the good life, inspires an aspirational lifestyle for a jet-set crowd and, of course, celebrates beautiful women," enthused Playboy CEO Christie Hefner.
Cavalli opened his first boutique in Saint-Tropez in 1972, foreseeing the potential of the fishing village as a desirable destination for fashion's elite.
In 2000, confirming his status as a pioneer in the denim world, Roberto Cavalli launched Cavalli Jeans - later renamed Just Cavalli.
Line is a 40 year old Danish expat, and co-owner of the online shoe company roccamore.com, who has lived in Malta for almost eight years. She has a keen interest in technology, but loves fashion even more! Keep up with Line online at www.lineyoung.com and www.instagram.com/lineyoung