The signore who made Julia Roberts the Pretty Woman: to the death of fashion designer Nino Cerruti

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1963: Italian industrialist Nino Cerruti with his young daughter Silvia.

She was a student at the model school that her father gave to his hometown of Biella - and which is dedicated to his father, Silvio.

When Cerruti was twenty, after the death of his father, he had taken over the family textile business and abandoned his philosophy studies to do so.

Photo: Mondadori/Getty Images

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1968: Cerruti (left) and his brother Attilio (middle) test fabrics in Biella together with an employee.

Here in Piedmont, his grandfather and his two brothers founded a textile factory in 1881, the Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti.

In the 1960s, Nino Cerruti met Giorgio Armani and hired him as a designer.

The two parted ways in 1975 when Armani founded his own company.

Photo: Mondadori/Getty Images

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1968: Nino Cerruti with a model on Capri

Photo: Slim Aarons/Getty Images

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1980: The legendary Swedish ski racer Ingemar Stenmark also had his clothes made by Cerruti.

Photo: Kenneth Jonasson / AFP

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1985: With his casual elegance, the fashion designer was considered a pioneer of ready-to-wear fashion for men in the 20th century.

Although he started with menswear, collections for women soon followed.

Photo:

Ralph Gatti/AFP

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1985: Cerruti fashion show in Paris.

Photo: Daniel Simon/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

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1988: The designer with his wife and son in their apartment in Rome.

Photo: Raphael Gaillarde/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

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1990: Cerruti also outfitted Hollywood stars in their roles, such as Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in »Pretty Woman«, Michael Douglas in »Wall Street«, Denzel Washington in »Philadelphia« or Christian Bale in »American Psycho« - and he was also the official designer of the Ferrari Formula 1 team.

Photo: American Pictorial Collection / IMAGO

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1992: Nino Cerruti fashion show in Paris, where he opened his first boutique in 1967.

He focused on expansion - including leather goods, perfumes, watches.

The Fratelli Cerruti group included the brands Cerruti 1881 (in Paris), Lanificio Cerruti (in Biella) and Hitman (in Milan).

Photo: Daniel Simon/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

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1995: French footballer David Ginola, rugby players Émile Ntamack and Laurent Cabannes present the spring/summer collection.

Photo: Franck Perry / AFP

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1999: The Italian designer with French film stars Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant.

Photo: Jack Guez / AFP

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2002: Presentation of the "Audi A3 Cerruti", a cooperation between the fashion designer and the German car manufacturer.

Photo: Czarek Skololowski/AP

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2015: In Florence, in the Marino Marini Museum, the large retrospective »Il Signor Nino« was opened during the Pitti Uomo men's fashion fair.

Photo:

Chris Warde Jones / NYT / Redux / laif

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2011: Cerruti store in Hong Kong.

In October 2000, Cerruti sold 51 percent of his company to an Italian group of investors.

In 2006 an American company bought the brand, and at the end of 2010 a Chinese menswear retail chain took over.

Photo: Vincent Yu/AP

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2022: Italian fashion designer Nino Cerruti (pictured here in an undated photo in Canada) died on Saturday at the age of 91 in a hospital in the Piedmont region.

"It is with great sadness" that Giorgio Armani, whose teacher Cerruti was, bids farewell on his Instagram page: "Although we have lost contact over the years, I have always considered him one of the people who had a real and positive impact on my life .«

Photo: Beaty;

Keith/Toronto Star/Getty Images

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