The Italian fashion designer and entrepreneur Nino Cerruti died in the hospital in Vercelli, where he was hospitalized for hip surgery. He was 91 years old, Italian media reported. Descendant of a family of textile industrialists from Biella, he was one of the great protagonists of fashion of the last century and is credited with revolutionising men’s ready-t-wear fashion in the 1960s. He also gave designer Giorgio Armani his first fashion break. Later, Armani became very famous on the world of fasion.
Actually, Cerruti would have preferred to be a journalist, but as his father died shortly before his 20th birthday, the philosophy student had to take over the family business in Piedmont, northern Italy, in the early 1950s.
A decade and a half later, he ventured into the fashion industry and opened his first men’s boutique and design center “Cerruti 1881” in Paris in 1967, in homage to the year in which his grandfather founded the small textile factory in the town of Biella. At that time there was a designer named Giorgio Armani, who would later make a world career as a fashion designer himself.
Within a few years, Cerruti was gaining a large international clientele with its men’s ready-to-wear. Cerruti also made a name for itself with perfume creations for men and women, and sportswear was later added to the range. Cerruti dressed many Hollywood stars and was also the official designer of the Ferrari Formula 1 team.
-With repubblica.it input
