The most obvious inheritor of Roberto Cavalli’s throne was sitting in the creative director’s chair a year ago. Peter Dundas worked side by side with Cavalli before he took the Emilio Pucci job that made his name, and intimately knows the Glamazonian principles of the brand. When that partnership didn’t pan out after three seasons, the Cavalli business team did just about the least obvious thing going: They hired Paul Surridge, a little-known designer of menswear.
Surridge is an unlikely successor to this Florentine house, to be sure. But the British Central Saint Martins grad is no newcomer to fashion’s musical chairs game. He’s got an extensive CV, with stints at Calvin Klein when the man himself was still there, Burberry, Jil Sander, and Z Zegna. He knows how to synthesize and channel a particular aesthetic. Which is what made his debut today in an open-at-the-sides tent in the Parco Sempione (Surridge gets points for the setting) a surprise. He didn’t flat-out reject the famous Cavalli-isms—there were plenty of zebra stripes, for example, animalier being a key house look—but the tone of this show couldn’t have been more different than that of his predecessor or of Cavalli himself.
There was the sunny venue, but that was just the start. Surridge has taken the temperature of the moment and decided that the world isn’t primed for sexy again. That’s debatable: Tom Ford, who’s always had excellent timing, chose this season to stage a glam comeback of his own in New York. But Surridge is right about one thing: Cavalli’s version of sexy—the kind that advertises a woman’s availability, so to speak—isn’t really trending. And so he tempered those vibes with an evident athletic streak, lifting the show’s many racerback tank silhouettes and even a couple of stretchy (read: easy to wear) knit evening dresses from the yoga world. Surridge also made a conscientious attempt to broaden the Cavalli offering via items like the zebra-stripe trench and a sharply tailored belted shirt and trouser pairing.
How did it all fare? Surridge is a minimalist in maximalist’s clothing, so this was decidedly on the tame side for a Cavalli show, without a smidgen of the gleeful bad taste he was notorious for. But it was not without potential in the red carpet department. A midnight blue, off-the-shoulder number with openwork beading scrolling top to bottom was a knockout, and a pair of halter-neck styles had a streamlined sexiness that will appeal to toned celebrities.
Surridge saw Cavalli last weekend and shared elements of the collection with him. He invited Cavalli to attend today’s show, but minutes before it began he didn’t know if he’d turn up or not. Turn up he did, and the two embraced when the new designer emerged for his bow. This collection played it safe where Cavalli’s collections did anything but, but Surridge has Cavalli’s support, which is an important first step.
