The designer Nino Cerruti, a great figure in fashion who made casual elegance, the “sprezzatura”, his credo died at the age of 91, announced the Italian press this Saturday January 15, 2022.
The famous Italian designer Nino Cerruti died at the age of 91, in a hospital in Vercelli, in Piedmont (north-west) where he was for a hip operation. “It is a giant among Italian entrepreneurs who is leaving“Reacted the Deputy Minister of Economic Development Gilberto Pichetto.
For Carla Capasa, president of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion, he is a great innovator, a creative visionary and precursor of many realities of today». «He leaves a great legacy: the courage to invest and believe in young people. He was the one who believed in a very young Giorgio Armani of whom he was the master“, he added, defining Nino Cerruti as”the smartest man in italy».
Nino Cerruti and Giorgio Armani, a successful duo
Nino Cerruti was born on September 25, 1930 in Biella. He had been forced to abandon his philosophy studies at the age of 20, after the death of his father Silvio, to take over the family textile factory. This is how he buried his dream of becoming a journalist.
He met Giorgio Armani, four years his junior in the 1960s. He hired him as a designer for men. The duo separated a decade later, following Armani’s decision to found his own fashion house in 1975.
When his line of sportswear was very successful in the 1980s, he sponsored top athletes of the time, such as American tennis player Jimmy Connors and Swedish skier Ingemar Stenmark. The famous French actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Italian Marcello Mastroianni also wore his costumes.
Nino Cerruti was named Knight of Labor in 2000, was also the official designer of the Ferrari Formula 1 team in 1994. In 2001, he sold his “Cerruti 1881” brand to Italian investors, which was then sold to a fund of American investment then to the Chinese group Trinity.
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