Obituary for designer Cerruti: "Il signor Nino"

This career was already mapped out in his birthplace.

Nino Cerruti, who died on Saturday at the age of 91 in a hospital in Vercelli, according to "Corriere della Sera" from complications of a hip operation, was born nearby: in Biella, the Italian capital of wool.

Here in Piedmont, his grandfather and his two brothers founded a textile factory in 1881, the Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti.

No wonder Nino Cerruti, who was born on September 25, 1930, became a protagonist of the legendary rise of Italian post-war fashion.

Alphonse Kaiser

Responsible editor for the department "Germany and the World" and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin.

• Follow I follow

At the age of 20, the young man inherited the business after the death of his father Silvio.

He immediately finished his philosophy studies and started to work.

He was familiar with fabric production, with looms, spinning machines and dye works.

But earlier than the companies Loro Piana or Ermenegildo Zegna, he realized that he also had to make a name for himself in the production of clothing.

And that name was, in the style of the time: Hitman.

In 1957 he introduced his first Hitman men's collection.

It wasn't Giorgio Armani who was the first designer to come up with deconstructed jackets for men.

No, Nino Cerruti, together with Armani, who was four years his junior and had worked for him as a designer for years since 1965, created the basis for the Italian suit, freed from thick padding, becoming a symbol of fashionable modernity.

Heavy British tweed, on the other hand, became superfluous with the introduction of central heating and today, at most, still has to protect against the cold on Scottish country estates.

In 1967 he opened his first boutique in Paris

When Milan, Rome and Florence were still fighting for supremacy in Italian fashion, Nino Cerruti moved his company headquarters to Paris. He opened his first boutique in 1967 on the Place de la Madeleine. Cerruti (in Paris), Lanificio Cerruti (in Biella) and Hitman (in Milan) formed the Fratelli Cerruti group. Like Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace and Gianfranco Ferré, who started their own brands in the 1970s, Cerruti also focused on fashion and business expansion with its “casual chic”. In addition to men's fashion, he soon also brought out women's fashion, in addition to ready-made clothing he also created sports, jeans and sports fashion. He did good business in fragrances and outfitted athletes such as American tennis player Jimmy Connors, Swedish skier Ingemar Stenmark and the Ferrari Formula 1 team.

Even as an outfitter for actors, he was faster than most designers - because his client Jean-Paul Belmondo asked him to do so. His film fashion career began in 1965 with the film "The Great Adventures of Monsieur L.", in which he made Belmondo look inimitably casual. Don Johnson also made

in "Miami Vice" (since 1984)

because he casually wore T-shirts under the Cerruti blazer and leather shoes with no socks. Louis de Funès, Tom Cruise, Gérard Depardieu, Robert Redford, Harrison Ford - Nino Cerruti saw so many different actors as a challenge for the variability of his style and of course as a good marketing tool.

When he reached retirement age, Nino Cerruti renewed his fashion with outside help. From 1996 to 1997 Narciso Rodriguez designed the women's fashion for him, from 1997 to 2002 Peter Speliopoulos - two American designers who, with their feel for good fabrics and minimalist cuts, corresponded to the style of the house. Cerruti, bestowed the honorary title of Cavaliere del Lavoro by the President of Italy in 2000, gave them freedom to reinterpret his name. Until he sold the fashion division of his company and finally left in 2002. After that, the importance of his brand decreased. After being sold on to a Chinese company, the Cerruti 1881 brand is now almost exclusively available in China. He himself remained in business with Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti.

Even in old age, Nino Cerruti embodied the style that he had spread: classically dressed, but loose and without a tie, a quiet man who looked dazzling, a tall gentleman who was happy to let others go first because he was no longer in the foreground had to push. In the end, he once said ironically, he only ever dressed himself.

On Saturday, many of his acquaintances, friends and fans expressed concern. "It is with great sadness that I learned of the death of Nino Cerruti," wrote Giorgio Armani on Instagram about "il signor Nino". "Though we've lost touch over the years, I've always looked to him as one of the people who made a real and positive impact on my life. He was the one who sparked my love for soft cuts, and he also taught me the importance of having an all-encompassing vision, as a designer and as an entrepreneur.”

Carlo Capasa, the president of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, called him "the chicest man in Italy", "a great innovator, a visionary creative and a mastermind of many of today's developments".

And the mayor of Biella, Claudio Corradino, wrote that Nino Cerruti made the Piedmont city known all over the world, "with class and elegance, but also with the way in which he expressed himself - an exceptional gentleman".