Roberto Cavalli. A dance of Energy.
Fall/Winter 2014-2015
A hypnotizing dance of fire circles the runway: an equestrian atmosphere alternates with flashes of elaborate flapper dresses.
A parade of tweed, Donegal, leather, military shapes and enveloping blanket coats makes a powerful entrance: like a modern day hunting party that blends with the symbols of the Maison. A show of classics - the uniform coat, the python trench lined in leather and the white mink trench, a pant with side stripes and the new Chivalry pant are cut with sartorial precision in the Roberto Cavalli tradition, but animated with sanguine details.
Lion and horse heads, straps and riding crops, foulards that become dresses. Leather and fringe inserts, fur with animal stripe inlays, all signs of the Cavalli military Neo Chivalry.
The dance intensifies when the Cavalli woman reveals flashes of light and movement in the flapper dress: this woman who takes shape among the prints, the intarsias, the lace and the embroidery is a modern Lee Miller, the muse of Man Ray and of the most hypnotic debut du siècle. A time of sinuous outrageousness, revisited today by Roberto Cavalli with complex workmanship.
The femininity of the twenties and the geometry of the thirties weaves in and out of the collection in the dresses below the knee that are open-ended with slit or fringed hems. Hems that reveal games of lace and chiffon, feathers and crystals, that cut through the prints, make the butterflies embroideries fly, and that make petals open.
A circling that catches on fire when from black and white the dresses inflame with red -- in a pure fire print, on fox fur or a feather print - to then become deep blue or black, like a night that's illuminated by the Cavalli woman.
Her bag is the Regina, big enough to contain the entire kingdom of whoever wears it. Handles and details in brass worked by hand, panels of scale prints, the signs of a cosmopolitan traveler, that circles the globe guarding the secret of energy.
