It is not rare to stumble upon a novel or a film in which a fashion designer or house is mentioned, but there aren't too many modern brands that appear in both.
Cerruti 1881 was instead among the main brands favoured by Wall Street banker Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis' controversial novel American Psycho. When the book was turned into a film directed by Mary Harron, costume designer Isis Mussenden collaborated with the Italian fashion designer Nino Cerruti and his brand to recreate Bateman's mid-'80s suits. There is also one scene in the film in which violent Patrick (Christian Bale) attacks the Asian owner of a laundry, shouting at her that you can't bleach a Cerruti.
In the film psychopath yuppie and slave to designer labels Patrick is dressed to kill, but at the time the Cerruti company asked not to show him wearing the famous brand when the main character was killing his victims. This decision reflected the politeness of the original founder of Cerruti 1881, Nino Cerruti, who died yesterday at 91 at Vercelli hospital, following complications from a surgery.
Born in 1930 in Biella, the Italian town famous for the production of textiles and yarns, Cerruti took over his family's textile company in 1950 after his father died. Though at the time Cerruti hoped to become a journalist and was studying philosophy, he managed to rise to the occasion and turned fashion into his vocation.
In 1957 he presented his first line (Hitman) considered at the time revolutionary for its deconstructed jackets, followed by the brand Flying Cross founded with Osvaldo Testa in 1962.
As the years passed, he expanded, including luxury lines and fragrances, grouped under his Cerruti 1881 brand (an iconic year for the designer, marking the date Cerruti's grandfather founded in Biella the textile mill Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti).
In 1967, he opened the first Cerruti 1881 boutique in Place de la Madeleine in Paris (designed by da Vico Magistretti): his trousers became fashionable among French ladies and were also appreciated by Coco Chanel. In the '60s he also hired Giorgio Armani, who worked for Cerruti for six years, learning the importance of sartorial softness, before going on to found his own famous company in 1975.
In the '70s the brand launched knitwear, shirts and a casual line, Cerruti 1881 Brothers, followed by a sportswear line that became popular with tennis and skiing enthusiasts. In the meantime, the collaboration between the brand and cinema that had started with Arthur Penn's "Bonnie & Clyde" (1967), featuring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the infamously stylish gangster couple that went on to inspire hundreds of runways, continued in the decades that followed.
In some cases Cerruti 1881 provided wardrobes for actors and actresses; in others Cerruti himself collaborated with a costume designer to create a suit or a dress for a specific character.
The brand's designs appear in Lewis Teague's "The Jewel of the Nile" (1985), Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" (1987), George Miller's "The Witches of Eastwick" (1987), Garry Marshall's "Pretty Woman" (1990), Paul Verhoeven's "Basic Instinct" (1992), Adrian Lyne's "Fatal Attraction" (1987) and "Indecent Proposal" (1993), Jonathan Demme's "Philadelphia" (1993), Robert Altman's "Prêt-à-Porter" (1994) and Mary Harron's "American Psycho" (2000), just to mention a few ones.
Rather than being iconic, most of the designs created for films aimed at functionality: even the elegant red and black gown with a cut out motif on the back donned by Kathleen Turner for the opening reception in "The Jewel of the Nile" had to be functional as it allowed her to get off the a dinghy and on a motorcycle. Her practical ivory linen T-shirt and military green wallet skirt in the same film, helped her character performing impossible stunts, including crossing the desert, climbing a mountain and running on a speeding train, almost to prove that these were stylish clothes to live in.
Through films Nino Cerruti became friends with various actors, among them also Jack Nicholson, whom he dressed in 1995 in black suits for Sean Penn's "The Crossing Guard" and in white linen trousers, pink silk jacket and matching pink duster, in comedy "The Witches of Eastwick", an ensemble that was also a tribute to the '80s, a decade of excesses, kitsch and freedom as well.
Designer of Ferrari’s Formula 1 team, in the mid-1990s, he launched the womenswear collection Cerruti Arte, designed by Narciso Rodriguez in 1995. But five years later he sold a controlling stake in the company to Fin.Part, an Italian industrial group (now defunct) that later bought also the rest of the company and Cerruti departed to focus on the textile mill Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti in Biella.
The Cerruti star waned as the years passed: in 2005, after Fin.Part went bankrupt, the brand passed to American private equity firm MatlinPatterson, and was sold to China's Trinity Ltd. in 2010 (Trinity entered into liquidation this year). Nino Cerruti remains instead an important chapter in the history of Italian fashion, representing the quintessential entrepreneur: he was indeed an innovator, a decision maker and an indefatigable textile researcher as well.
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