Obituary: Roberto Cavalli, fashion designer nicknamed the ‘Leopard King’ who embodied 2000s bling

Propelled to fame in the 1970s by the patronage of Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, he went on to dress Madonna, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lopez, Gisele Bundchen, Britney Spears, Beyoncé and Kate Moss.

His catwalk shows were a riot of skin, both animal and human, summed up by one critic as “Me Cavalli, You Jane”. When a more severe look dominated the catwalks in the 1980s and 1990s he opted out, refusing to become part of what he called the industrialisation of fashion.

“I cannot make anything out of two metres of plain, black fabric,” he insisted. “It’s horrible.” His over-the-top outfits were designed to be worn with gusto, though with the wearer’s fingers firmly crossed that nothing anatomical would fall out. He created the tight crystal-and-lamé outfits for the Spice Girls’ 2007-08 comeback tour and Shakira’s grass skirts for her 2010 World Cup performances in ­Johannesburg.

Cavalli was an unrestrained, leather-­skinned, Cuban-cigar-smoking and perma-tanned hedonist who laid enthusiastic claim to the title of “king of bling”. His rambling house in Tuscany was shared with a menagerie that included a St Bernard, an Alsatian, a Persian cat called Pussy, an iguana, two parrots, a cockatiel and a monkey who kept him company when watching television. He had a tiger cub, but gave it to the circus when it started biting.

​His fashion house became indelibly associated with animal print, which he imprinted on his cars and the arms of his ubiquitous aviator sunglasses. He claimed to be the only straight man in fashion, and said that women should never wear all black or swear, because “a woman’s mouth should always be clean”.

Roberto Cavalli was born in a ­Tuscan village on November 15, 1940, the son of Giorgio Cavalli, a mining-company surveyor who in 1944 was among a group of civilians lined up against a wall and shot dead during a Nazi massacre, a reprisal for attacks by the partisans. The traumatised Roberto was left for many years with a stutter. His maternal grandfather was Giuseppe Rossi, an Impressionist painter who had exhibited at the Uffizi in Florence and whose artistic flair Roberto inherited through his seamstress mother Marcella.

At 19 he began studying art and textile printing at the Institute of Art. He discovered haute couture on a transformative visit to Paris and opened a studio on his return to Florence, selling his designs to Pierre Cardin and Hermes, and pioneering new technology for printing patterns on leather.

His first collection was shown in 1970 in Paris and in 1972 he presented jeans with patchwork designs in Florence. In the early 1990s Cavalli added Lycra to jeans to make them stretchier, tighter and sexier. He sandblasted them, painted a snake design on the leg and created a sensation by sending Naomi Campbell out in them on the Milan catwalk. His first male client was Lenny Kravitz and he later dressed Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams. Elton John bought a Cavalli silk shirt after admiring it on David Beckham.

In 1964 Roberto Cavalli married his high-school sweetheart Silvanella ­Giannoni; they had two children.

The marriage was dissolved after nine years and in 1980 he married Eva Duringer, who became his business partner. They had three children, but the marriage was dissolved in 2010. Five years later he sold his ­Roberto Cavalli brand to an investment company. Last year he had a sixth child with Swedish model Sandra Nilsson, who was 45 years his junior.