Italian designer Nino Cerruti died on Saturday at the age of 91.
Nino Cerruti dreamed of becoming a journalist, and took over the family fabric factory at the age of twenty.
The beginning of a trajectory that merges with the history of Made in Italy fashion for seventy years.
From the deconstructed jacket to the single-brand store, passing through the trousers for women, what fashion owes to the nicknamed “the most chic man in Italy”.
Nino Cerruti, who passed away on Saturday, was the master of relaxed refinement.
If Cerruti is a global brand, which also sells perfumes, leather goods, watches, jewellery, glasses, ties, scarves, shoes, writing instruments, underwear, socks, sleepwear and homewear, it all started with a designer, a magician of weavings, who wrote the history of Made in Italy fashion over the last seventy years.
By following a simple rule, "clothes are our second skin and must be in harmony with the body, while being beautiful and of high quality: I never believed in artistic ugliness", he liked to say.
A look back at the contribution of "the most stylish man in Italy" to fashion.
Innovation for new yarns and fabrics
Born September 25, 1930 in Biella, Italy, Nino Cerruti dreamed of becoming a journalist.
However, he abandoned his philosophy studies in 1950, at just twenty years old, to take over Lanificio Cerruti, the family spinning and weaving factory, Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti, founded by his grandfather in 1881.
Installed in Biella in Italy, at the foot of the Alps, the spinning mill takes advantage of the exceptional purity of the water which makes it possible to wash and dye wool from Italy or Australia or cashmere from Mongolia, reworked in order to create fabrics such as flannel, tweed, cashmere or woolen cheesecloth.
At the helm of the spinning mill, he reveals his talents as a creator and business leader.
Nino Cerruti is convinced that true elegance lies in clothes that put you at ease.
Under his leadership, La Lainière Piedmontaise became a research laboratory that multiplied technical innovations to create new yarns and fabrics – ever finer, more robust and precious – such as the super 100 (1 kg of wool for 100 km of yarn), followed by the super 120, 150, 180 and even 210!
Even today, Cerruti fabrics are made in these workshops.
“My family has been in the fabric business since the early 19th century and I took over the business soon after I started designing.
Since then, we have witnessed an evolution towards more comfortable clothing, an evolution that corresponds to changes in our lifestyles and our social behavior", he explained in April 2004 to our colleagues from the Italian edition of
L' Official
.
A “casual chic” male wardrobe
Nino Cerruti invests in two Milanese factories to produce its first men's lines.
In 1957, he opened the Hitman boutique in Milan where his first men's ready-to-wear collection was sold – mainly ultra-luxurious soft suits, in 1962 he founded the Flying Cross brand with Osvaldo Testa.
His credo: to rhyme elegance and relaxation.
The "casual chic", a combination of the Neapolitan sartorial tradition, elements of sportswear and luxurious but comfortable fabrics, was born.
The "deconstructed jacket", the centerpiece of "casual chic"
Nino Cerruti is considered the first to create the deconstructed jacket for men.
A light and flowing jacket, which does away with the traditional tailoring interlining, with the minimum of fabric on the shoulders only, then nothing more, which makes the jacket so supple and light as a shirt that you no longer know if you the door or not.
A style of jacket that will be popularized by Richard Gere in
American Gigolo
in 1980 and Don Johnson in
Miami Vice
between 1984 and 1989, both dressed by Giorgio Armani.
In the 1960s, Nino Cerruti met the latter, then scenographer of the windows of the Milanese department store La Rinascente, and appointed him fashion designer for men.
Nino Cerruti provides fabrics and clothes, and Giorgio Armani spins it all up in his own way and invents a “stilista” profession.
A banality today, then unprecedented, which makes the success of the duo.
Stars showcasing a lifestyle
Jean-Paul Belmondo in a striped three-piece suit in
Borsalino
(1970), Kathleen Turner bewitching in her dizzying open-back dress in
Le Diamant du Nil
(1986), Jack Nicholson in a pink linen jacket in
The Witches of Eastwick
( 1987), Richard Gere in
Pretty Woman
(1990), Sharon Stone in a nightie in
Sliver
(1993) or even Tom Hanks in
Philadelphia
(1994)… The Cerruti collections have marked the minds as much as the film.
"
Films and television are incredible ways to communicate (…).
By what other medium can you influence the minds and attitudes of so many people?
“, he says in the columns of
Figaro
in 2020.
As early as 1958, the young entrepreneur had the idea to launch a new petrol blue fabric, to join forces with Lancia.
He has twelve cars painted blue which will take Rome's famous Via Veneto, first driven by Anita Ekberg.
Nino Cerruti understood that he was not selling clothes, but a lifestyle, the
Dolce Vita
.
His first store Cerruti 1881, which sells his line of luxury ready-to-wear for men, located at 3, place de la Madeleine in Paris, was from its opening in 1967 the favorite meeting place for people of the New Wave, in the forefront of which Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon push the door.
The world of sport also attracts him, especially for the search for high-performance fabrics.
When he launched his sports line in the early 1980s, the designer sponsored world famous athletes such as American tennis player Jimmy Connors and Swedish skier Ingemar Stenmark.
In 1994, he became the official designer of the Ferrari Formula 1 team, satisfying his passion for imagery linked to the figure of the driver, which had always fascinated him.
The precursor of the “gender fluid”
From the end of the 1960s, in its Cerruti 1881 single-brand store, designed by world-renowned architect Vico Magistretti with a totally innovative concept, men's collections were displayed alongside women's collections, something never seen before.
"It is very interesting to see how the men's wardrobe is getting closer and closer to the women's wardrobe", he underlines in
L'Officiel
Italy version at the beginning of the 2000s. In 1968, he proposes a unisex collection, functional and interchangeable, and invites women to dive into their man's wardrobe to swap trench coats, ties, cardigans or jersey sets.
Nino Cerruti stands out as an innovative stylist who parades men and women in the same clothes on the catwalks.
Women, including Coco Chanel, loved the designer's courageous choice to dress them in trousers, at a time when trousers were still considered outrageous.
Nino Cerruti has contributed to the emergence of what is called gender fluid, a fluidity between the codes of masculine and feminine that is more topical than ever.
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“Gender fluid”: What if we witnessed the end of the male and female genders?
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Nino Cerruti, famous Italian designer, dies at the age of 91
Style
Italy
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