Roberto Cavalli, fashion designer nicknamed the ‘Leopard King’ who embodied 2000s bling – obituary

Roberto Cavalli, who has died aged 83, was the maximalist Italian fashion designer known as the “Leopard King”, who unleashed on the world his fever dream of exotic animal prints, skintight sandblasted jeans and gravity-defying dresses. Propelled to fame in the 1970s by the patronage of Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, he went on to dress, in successive decades, Madonna, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lopez, Gisele Bundchen, Britney Spears, Beyoncé and Kate Moss.