Roberto Cavalli to close Dubai Fashion Week spring/summer 2025

The Italian house is the latest guest of honour at the home-grown fashion event

Creative consultant Fausto Puglisi will bring a new Roberto Cavalli collection to Dubai Fashion Week. EPA

The Italian house of Roberto Cavalli will be the guest of honour at the next season of Dubai Fashion Week, it has been announced.

Running from September 1 until September 7 at Dubai Design District, the spring/summer 2025 event will conclude with a special collection by Cavalli.

It joins a growing list of big name labels invited to DFW, that also includes the American brand Carolina Herrera. Cavalli will bring the season to a close with its own take on high octane Italian glamour.

In 2020, Fausto Puglisi was named creative consultant of Roberto Cavalli, and during his four years at the helm has threaded through his own vision of glamour to the house, reimagining it for a new audience. Having already dressed the likes of Madonna, Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez under his own label in the days before he joined Cavalli, Puglisi is a dab hand at catching the spirit and mood of the moment, and guests at the DFW event can expect a parade of fabulous looks that seamlessly blend bohemia and strength.

After founding his eponymous label in 1970, Roberto Cavalli quickly gained a global following for his unapologetic take on excess and animalia, with flowing, floaty clothes that were made for being seen in and for celebrating life. The first Roberto Cavalli store opened in the fashionable enclave of St Tropez in 1972 and in the years after, his designs came to epitomise glamour and fashionable living.

Cavalli retired in 2015, handing the reins to the Norwegian designer Peter Dundas.

This is not the first time that Roberto Cavalli has brought its collection to the Middle East – the brand was also part of the Abu Dhabi Fashion Week in 2007. For the event, which took place on the grounds of Emirates Palace, Cavalli showed an array of colourful evening gowns.

Roberto Cavalli died in April, aged 83, while the company he founded today is owned by Hussain Sajwani of Damac Properties, who purchased it in 2019.