Cavalli Imitates Life
Roberto Cavalli’s SS25 channels elemental excess into sensual, tactile forms—reviving myth, matter, and motion as a counterpoint to fashion’s digital detachment.
Cavalli’s seasonal collection distills the elements into garments that ripple, shimmer, and smoulder. This wardrobe of wearable land and seascapes shifts between Mediterranean sensualities, scorching desert storms, and archival evocations of exotic fauna. Sun-stained, salt-laced, and wind-warped, Cavalli SS25 narrates eternities spent on ancient coasts, buried in searing sandbanks, or submerged in brine-heavy depths.
The label has long embraced excess, with flamboyance, animal prints, and innovative materials defining Cavalli's visual language. Having passed away in April of last year, SS25 maintains originality while honouring the designer’s iconic branding. Now under the creative direction of Italian designer Fausto Puglisi, this collection draws new energy from Puglisi’s native town, Messina.
From left to right, looks #02, #15, #11, and #10 from Roberto Cavalli SS25 Show. All images via SHOWstudio. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Pearlescent whites dominate the opening looks. It isn’t sterile, but sun-bleached, both luminous and absorbent. An ode to sailors and sirens, the assortment gives character to dexterous construction and fluidity. Reworking classic maritime uniforms, there’s a clear nod to naval precision. Ornamented with gold hardware, the sharp tailoring in the cropped blazer and overcoat are offset by the easy flow of the pleated skirt and loose linen trousers. These compositions maintain the sleek profile of seafaring with an added sensuality.
Other looks propose increasingly fluid, feminine silhouettes. Embodying glints of shell and stone, they channel myth over military. A rope-woven bustier—intricate but armoured—is paired with a silky mermaid skirt. Flowing from its robust counterpart, it hatches captivating movement with the illusion of a floating hem. Playing with geometric contours and textured textiles, hourglass cut-outs draw the eye in while forging seductive tensions. As crinkled satin gleams like sun on coastal rock, the fabric seems to cling and slip all at once.
From left to right, looks #18 and #19 from Roberto Cavalli SS25 Show. All images via SHOWstudio. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Crochet, rope, and tweed emerge as unlikely heroes of this oceanic palette. Material acuity is crucial here. Tweed and crochet, rendered into topical fishnets, are not seamless but cellular. A sustained motif, this collection lends maritime chic a rustic edge. The rope-crocheted skirt tugs at familiar nautical aesthetics, but with a high-fashion twist. It lands somewhere just between castaway netting and aristocratic sailing club. Cavalli situates fishnet between rugged yet refined, as decadent and unmoored from any cliché of bohemia. It’s deeply tactile, resisting fashion’s increasing slide into the virtual.
From left to right, looks #20, #22, and #25 from Roberto Cavalli SS25 Show. All images via SHOWstudio. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Cavalli’s desert metallics introduce a new biome. This palette swells with baked ochres, volcanic umbers, and warm serpent prints, grounding the more ethereal whites in a fleshier, earthier ensemble. Importantly, Cavalli’s desert palette disrupts sanitised chromophobia and obsessions with beige that dominate current trends. These burnished browns and bronzed metallics seek neither neutrality nor the supporting role. Abandoning complimentary neutrals, they assert saturation, friction, and atmosphere. The heavyset narwhal jewelry is especially striking in this context. Both totemic and grotesque, it reclaims the decorative as animalistic rather than dainty, primal rather than polished.
From left to right, looks #46, #28, and #48 from Roberto Cavalli SS25 Show. All images via SHOWstudio. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Cavalli conjures motion from the ocean, manipulating dimension, perspective, and hyper-realistic prints to deliver crashing-wave couture with a filmic edge. Water isn’t merely inspiration but materialised form. Crinkled satins texture the garments with animated liquidity. Triangular silhouettes amplify optical depth, framing incoming waves crashing into the foreground. Semi-sheer textiles evoke tidal translucency, offering depths where skin hovers just beneath the surface.
From left to right, looks #55, #56, and #60 from Roberto Cavalli SS25 Show. All images via SHOWstudio. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Ecstatic exotics unfurl in the finale, culminating in phoenix and peacocked plumes and sequinned wildcat stripes. Remembering the founder of the Maison, the finale showcases seven archive looks from the 2000s. Featuring top models Eva Herzigova, Joan Smalls, Isabeli Fontana, Natasha Poly, Mariacarla Boscono, Karen Elson and Alek Wek, each sport vivid expressions of Cavalli’s creative legacy.
As trends descend further into grayscale minimalism and office wear as cultural fantasy, Cavalli continues their promise of fashion as ferality, instead of pure function. This is couture that resists the bureaucratisation of the self. Where contemporary fashion tends toward disembodiment — AI-generated campaigns, dopamine dressing reduced to ‘pop of color’ algorithms — Cavalli recentres the body as organism before mannequin. Where others are asking how to dress like you're not trying, Cavalli asks: why pretend not to be alive?
