For the next two decades it remained largely unknown outside Europe. In the 1990s, he reinvented luxury denim, first with a sandblasted look, then adding Lycra to the jeans to make them fit better and look sexier. When model Naomi Campbell wore them on a runway show in 1993, stretch jeans took the world by storm.
Before this breakthrough, Cavalli’s business was declining and he considered closing his company. But by the mid-1990s, he was one of the biggest names in fashion, with stores around the world, celebrity admirers like Lenny Kravitz and Cindy Crawford, and licenses for everything from jewelry, perfumes and sunglasses to children’s clothes, household items and alcohol from the Roberto Cavalli brand, packed in a bottle covered with snake skin.
“Roberto loved excess, but he never lost his point of view,” wrote Nina Garcia, editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, in 2020. “Even when minimalism was the norm, he believed in maximalism. He dressed us with the idea that life – and fashion – should be lived to the fullest.”
In his private life, Roberto Cavalli himself liked Ferraris, thick cigars and tailored shirts revealing a tanned chest. He married the Miss Universe runner-up, owned a purple helicopter and a Tuscan vineyard, and was on a first-name basis with half of Hollywood’s stars.
