Roberto Cavalli trained as a painter in Florence and patented a process for printing on leather in the late 1960s. That technical breakthrough is the whole house in miniature: Cavalli treated garments as surfaces to paint, and built a label on prints nobody else could produce.
The commercial peak runs from the late nineties through the 2000s — animal prints, patchwork denim, devoré velvet, corseted eveningwear and the sharply cut blazers that anchored the ready-to-wear shows. Those years are now firmly in archive territory and are the period buyers ask for by name.
We're selective here. Cavalli was widely copied, and a lot of what circulates is diffusion or later licence product. We look for main-line ready-to-wear with correct labelling and intact print, particularly the 2000s runway-adjacent pieces where the cut is as distinctive as the pattern.