The fashion industry is in mourning: Nino Cerruti died on Saturday January 15, 2022 at the age of 91. The Italian designer died in a hospital in Vercelli, in Piedmont (north-west of Italy) where he was for a hip operation, according to the daily website Corriere della Sera, quoted by AFP. Nino Cerruti introduced “casual chic” to high-end menswear by inventing the first deconstructed jacket in the 1970s. He was then a past master in relaxed refinement.
“It is a giant among Italian entrepreneurs who is leaving“, reacted the Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Gilberto Pichetto. “A great innovator, a creative visionary and precursor to many of today’s realities“, said of him Carlo Capasa, president of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion.”He leaves a great legacy: the courage to invest and believe in young people. He was the one who believed in a very young Giorgio Armani of which he was the master“, Mr. Capasa added, defining Nino Cerruti as “the smartest man in italy“.
Giorgio Armani, quoted by the Corriere, said to have learned “with great sadness the death of Nino Cerruti“.”Nino had a piercing gaze, genuine curiosity, the ability to dare“, he added. His friend, photographer Paolo Roversi – who recently made the three new official portraits of Kate Middleton for her 40th birthday – said of him: “Nino is the Cheetah. He is like Prince Salina from the Lampedusa novel and Visconti’s film, this aristocrat who watches his world disappear before him. But he is still there, in front of us, more beautiful than ever“, recalled the Vogue France.
Costumes for Bebel and Mastroianni
Born September 25, 1930 in Biella, Nino Cerruti was forced to abandon his philosophy studies at the age of 20, after the death of his father Silvio, to take over the family textile factory, and to bury his dream of becoming a journalist. In the 1960s, he met Giorgio Armani, four years his junior, and hired him as a designer for men. The duo, which had a profound impact on the fashion world, separated a decade later, after Armani decided to found his own house in 1975.
Nino Cerruti’s line of sportswear was very successful in the 1980s and he notably sponsored American tennis player Jimmy Connors and Swedish skier Ingemar Stenmark. But athletes were not the only ones to wear his clothes: French actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Italian Marcello Mastroianni also wore his costumes. In 2001, he sold his “Cerruti 1881” brand to Italian investors, then sold to an American investment fund and then to the Chinese group Trinity.