The front row all teeth and hair, big, big hair comprising Elizabeth Hurley and her beau Shane Warne, Leona Lewis and a fleet of Italian TV personalities were greeted by Roberto Cavalli prior to his spring/ summer 2013 show. He is the only designer to do this come out and shake hands with his invitees, as if its a party hes hosting which, in a sense, it is.
The music is always up-tempo, the models look ravishing (as Liz Hurley later pointed out on Twitter) and the clothes well, theyve moved away from the brash, laminated-to-the-body, celebrity party kit of old and now sit firmly in the credible fashion arena and, still, no less loved by the paparazzi.
Roberto Cavalli walks that fine line between Fashion and Red Carpet with the dexterity of a tightrope walker. He started as so many designers in Milan have done this season with white. Not that you could call white leather lace trousers minimalism exactly, but as with his Just Cavalli collection shown earlier in the week, there was a distinct stripped-backness to the proceedings. The lace was fairly astonishing either in leather cut to resemble lace or the fragile fabric itself deftly manipulated into sharp-shouldered jackets and nude-pink or pale lime body-contouring dresses and floor-sweeping gowns.
He mixed in his signature scarf prints flamboyant designs, but again restrained in soft colours and air-light chiffon. Where the Roberto Cavalli of old might have stuck religiously to dresses, here he proposed striding super-wide trousers, worn with ultra-fragile camisoles a great modern alternative for the much-photographed women on the front row.
Not that there werent plenty of Hurley-esque dresses too. The last section, in black, was beaded, embroidered, crystal-tipped, plummeting, slit, backless you get the picture, but each look still planted on fashion terra firma.It was a great, bold show that showed off the best of Cavalli.
