PETER Dundas at Roberto Cavalli is doing a nifty job creating the kind of clothing Cavalli’s consumer base want to be liked in. Liked, that is, not just in life but perhaps more importantly online, by hordes of adoring followers and subscribers. Tapping especially into this whole warped world to create covetable clothing for the double-tapping me generation saw Dundas dwell on dramatic swoops of pattern flaring all over the show, sure to turn heads and break necks in the process.
Nevertheless, this is the Cavalli way through and through and Dundas’ hyper hippie girl gives contemporary sex appeal to a brand identity built around sexy. This also fed into a romanticised gyspy aesthetic more funk than folk and intended to beguile not through crafty sensuality or even pure glamour, but by all those patterns and prints bustling for attention.
Beyond the frantic face value of the collection inspirations seemed to have been culturally cherry-picked and plucked from Africa at large, Native-American heritage and even ancient Egypt. Dundas is however good at playing these down and to their strengths throughout to avoid any tomfoolery. At the core of SS17 is a talented designer who gives good reason for why Cavalli should still be a fixture of Italian high fashion.
by Livia Feltham
Images courtesy of Roberto Cavalli
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