Roberto Cavalli at AFF

THERE comes a point in every man's life (even if he is not an everyman) when he feels a change may do him good.

And in the case of Roberto Cavalli, that moment came as he was designing his Spring-Summer 2010 collection.

Instead of adding to the vast repertoire of glitzy, sex-bombshell looks that the Cavalli name is synonymous with, the Italian designer produced girly, frilly pieces that were not like anything he'd stamped his name on before.

The collection was good for his bank account because it sold out in stores, but it didn't do the same for his soul.

'It was a mistake,' Cavalli tells BT frankly in his thick Italian accent, during an interview last week when he was here for the Audi Fashion Festival.

'I realised that I have my style and I cannot change my style. Because when I create a collection, I have to love it, do you understand? And at the end of my summer collection, at that show, I was not happy. I don't care what other people think or say; I am the first, biggest judge of myself.'

That audacious attitude is what has sustained the man who calls himself 'a strange person on the fashion planet'.

Now into his 40th year as a designer, Cavalli is going strong and has expanded the brand's reach into wine, vodka, clubs - all of which he intends to bring into Singapore in future - and more in the past few years.

But back to his core business. On the tail of this year's unfulfilling Spring-Summer creations, the designer produced an Autumn-Winter collection whose main design philosophy was 'to be different from the collection before', he says.

And how! At his show in Singapore on Sunday, which was the AFF's closing event, Cavalli showed the audience a stunning series of nomadic-themed looks from his AW2010 collection that ranged from floaty silk harem pants to shaggy fur chubbies; a luxe tribal-bohemian aesthetic awash with animal prints and other inspirations from nature that was carried down the runway by models against a breathtakingly beautiful desert landscape that pictured bare, rocky cliffs against azure skies. (The extra-strong air conditioning, which swirled the models' skirts around their ankles and whipped through the furry jackets and satchels, also helped make this believable.)

Then the panoramic backdrop was replaced by the house's gold logo, and Cavalli sent out a sort of 'Greatest Hits' showcase comprising the brand's bestsellers in its history, which included a leopard-print corset and a dazzling figure-hugging floor-length gown covered in gold sequins.

There were one too many beaded flapper-type mini dresses, perhaps, but the overall effect of the show was spectacular, with the designer showing, quite literally, the stuff he was made of.

The event was an emotional, almost poetic one, which earned a standing ovation from the 720-strong audience and spoke more of Cavalli than his individual designs often do from shop windows.

And it offered some insight on the designer as he is behind the flash fashion front: the grandson of a master painter who was brought up to love nature (he spent his free time in Singapore taking photos of the orchids in the Botanic Gardens and the butterflies in Sentosa's Butterfly Park 'for ideas'), and who likes nothing better than to take his helicopter up into the Tuscan skies when he is home.

'I prefer to be in the sky than to be a high flyer here, because when I am in the sky, I am really in the sky,' he says, his voice softening. 'When I fly, I don't need anything - it's just me, the sky, the world. And maybe I love it also because I feel more close to God.'

But the designer's characteristic feistiness returns when the conversation turns to his AW2010 presentation in Milan earlier this year.

Recalls Cavalli: 'Oh my God, that show was fantastic. I remember in the middle of it, I started to cry a little. I said to myself, Roberto, that time we f*** the world!'

And in a world where trend-followers are a dime a dozen and originality is priceless, we can only hope that he continues to do just that.

This article was first published in The Business Times.