Cafes, bars and restaurants opened by fashion designers have been mushrooming all over the world in the last few years, but Roberto Cavalli is not your average designer and that’s why his Cavalli Club is a unique venue.
Cavalli opened the venue at the end of last year in the San Frediano area of his native Florence. Set in an ex-Anglican church next to the Basilica of Santa Maria del Carmine, the club is considered by many as a donation by the designer to the city.

The club was designed by Italian architect Italo Rota who recreated inside the building a sort of space-ship like structure that doesn’t lean on the original walls. The mirrors that cover most of the venue, reflect the surrounding environments deepening the spaces and creating on the ceilings galaxies of lights, reflecting ad infinitum the leopard printed seats.
The club is hosting until the end of the week a photographic exhibition of Cavalli’s menswear collection. The images, taken by various photographers and selected by Max from an archive that covers the last decade, are showcased along the walls while a slideshow is projected on a screen mounted on the club stage where, a couple of days ago, Little Louie Vega and Anané performed before an enthusiastic audience. The photographs perfectly chronicle the developments and changes the Cavalli menswear collection went through in the last ten years, celebrating the designer and the 76th edition of the Florence-based menswear event Pitti Immagine Uomo.   

The retrospective is on at the Cavalli Club, Piazza del Carmine, Florence, Italy, until the end of the week.