Roberto Cavalli Presents Its New Women’s Collection Spring/Summer 2023

At the end of the day, she’s a bad girl

What if Tony Duquette was called by Alfred Hitchcock to decorate the interiors of a film noir set in Los Angeles, while Charles James and Adrian worked on the costumes relying on Fulco di Verdura to add the finishing, glittering touches to the heroine’s extra-glamorous looks? What if all of this happened in a fashion fantasy? Everything is possible in the Roberto Cavalli world, as long as boundaries are surpassed and the opulence of invention rules.

Heralded by a pineapple, swarming with more pineapples, palms and grapes and shimmering in weaves of moirè silk, this season the Roberto Cavalli story, as envisioned by Fausto Puglisi, comes suffused with glitzy whiffs of Hollywood glam from the Age d’or of cinema and a baroque spirit that calls for both excess and reduction - that’s the contradictory Sicilian heritage Puglisi inhabits. Ever the sensual provocateur, he believes that nothing is more modern today than going classic. Classic à la Fausto, that is: a mix of sculptural couture shapes stripped down to the essence, body conscious femininity, and an unabashed urge for decoration.

Playing with opposites sets the tone: demure dresses and revealing second skins; jupons and short dresses; canvas and moirè; neutral tones and bursts of cosmetic, powdery colors. Tops bloom in sculpted flounces and peplums; black cuts graphic lines while giddy bagatelle scenes are printed all over coats and skirts. Grapes, palms and pineapples punctuate necklines or turn into whole bejeweled dresses. A sense of properness meets the taste of provocation, within a frame of elegance that is, indeed, classic and composed in spirit.

But this is Cavalli, and the director of this noir is Fausto Puglisi. Thereafter, something different lurks behind the demure demeanor. Prim and prissy with her chunky headband, perched on high heels or in pointy flats, the heroine looks like a good girl, but she is definitely not. Appearances, after all, are there to deceive, and all the better for that.