Roberto Cavalli

Born in Florence in 1970, Roberto Cavalli launched his eponymous label with a debut collection of painted leather, the work of a designer who saw fabric as a canvas and the female form as his muse.

Cavalli's earliest breakthrough was technical as much as artistic: he invented and patented a process for printing on leather, a feat that drew immediate commissions from houses such as Hermes and Pierre Cardin and announced a singular new talent.

It was the wild that made him famous. Leopard, zebra, python and tiger prints became his language, draped over featherlight silks and chiffons to create a vision of glamour that was sensual, exotic and unmistakably his own.

In the 1990s he revolutionised denim, debuting the first sand-blasted jeans and elevating a workwear staple into a luxury object, a triumph that crowned him the favourite of supermodels and rock stars alike.

Today the house endures as a temple of maximalist Italian seduction, where the spirit of the wild meets the artistry of Florence in every print, every cut, and every unapologetically glamorous silhouette.