Roberto Cavalli: The Endless party Roberto Cavalli, fresh from a late night at the Life Ball, explains why vulgarity still sells and sells. We all slow down a little once we reach a certain age; there's certainly no shame in that. Yet it is with an apologetic wave of one crispily tanned hand that Roberto Cavalli, 72, concedes: "Yes, last night I was in a much quieter mood than usual." Still, after dinner - Saturday's gala auction do for Vienna's Aids-benefit Life Ball, at which he was outbid at 28,000 euros for a champagne cooler of his own design before schmoozing in his sunglasses (as always) with Bill Clinton, Sir Elton John, Hilary Swank and Heinz Fischer (the President of Austria) - the evening did at least pick up a bit. IN PICTURES: Life Ball in Vienna Rightly (for it was an arresting sight) Cavalli's arrival at the Life Ball was broadcast live across Austria, Germany, Italy and beyond. In front of some 15,000 raucous party-goers dressed to the theme 1001 Nights (imagine massed ranks of raunchy slave girls and blue-body painted, gym-bunny genies), Cavalli drove to the stage down a highway-wide magenta carpet in a gold-painted Mini with his logo on the roof. The route was only about 100 yards but Cavalli milked it; he stopped often, leaving his wife Eva in the passenger seat as he tickled the sea of blue-painted palms stretched over the crowd barriers. "Ah, you saw that?" he baritones the morning after. It's part of my job to be a big actor. My role is to be a designer, yes, but also to be a rock star: that is how people expect to see me. Later, on stage, the pre-ball ceremony climaxed with an 80-dress show-athon that stretched from decades-old vintage to autumn/winter 2013 and encompassed all Cavalli's central themes. There was his breakthrough stretch-denim -"the jeans must be tight! Women wear the high-heels to look sexy, and you need that tight line above for it to work" - worn below sheer chiffon. And there was barely there eveningwear rippled with enough botanical and animal print to keep even Sir David Attenborough guessing. Karolina Kurkova, the belly-buttonless former Victoria's Secret model, was half swan, half sex kitten, and entirely otherworldly in a pale pulsating blur of bead-and-feather-peppered tulle. Roberto Cavalli: Karl Lagerfeld looks ridiculous High-faluting "industry" people sometimes pooh-pooh him, but Roberto Cavalli's clothes are to fashion what Andrew Lloyd Webber's musicals are to theatre: both sweep the converted helplessly away. And although sometimes very much in sync with fashion - particularly during the late 1970s, the mid 1990s, and the pre-recession 2000s - those clothes are not really designed to court tastemakers: they speak to the groin before the brain. Cavalli is also prone to undiplomatic swipes at his peers - he says he regrets once publicly comparing a new Giorgio Armani hotel to a psychiatric hospital, "because Armani was always friendly to me." Then within minutes he takes a pop at Prada ("they could not have created the atmosphere to do that show last night"). This keeps his stock among the ever-sensitive style seers prone to fluctuation. Those yes-yes-yes dresses apart, Cavalli is fashion's master of partying. Hence, as he chews prunes at the Imperial Hotel's breakfast bar on Sunday, he apologises for slipping away at midnight. "It's because we have just come from Cannes," he says. It feels like it went on for months - every night a party on the boat! - but it was only a week. The schedule was boom, boom, boom! People say what are you doing, how do you do it? They try to make me feel old. But as soon as I feel the atmosphere of the party, that button is pressed and whoosh - I feel the adrenalin. He sips a yoghurt drink, then readjusts those sunglasses. The party is part of my world. To make a great party is simple; all you need are beautiful women - charming, elegant and wild, this is very important for the pleasure of the eyes - plus nice guys, very good drinks and very good music. Left to right: Bill Clinton at the Life Ball and Eva Cavalli and Sharon Stone at Cannes PHOTO: STEFANO MASSE/ONPHRAME It probably doesn't hurt either that Cavalli has a 134ft-long, throbbingly purple motor-yacht, The RC, which has over the past decade become a choice decompression venue for movie stars seeking relief from the pressures of La Croisette. This year Sharon Stone, Adrien Brody, and Uma Thurman were among the revellers at Roberto's week-long shindig, along with Princess Charlene of Monaco and Kylie Minogue. One night it rained, so for safety's sake guests were allowed to keep their shoes on. The next morning the burnished wooden dance-floor had been stiletto-scratched to expensive shreds. Cavalli's fit with Cannes makes perfect sense. Because although Florentine - a self-taught print expert who started out working on a borrowed ping-pong table - his early successes first flourished on the Riviera. Roberto Cavalli autumn/winter 2013 in pictures Limbo, the sand-floored shop he opened in St Tropez in 1972, was where his patched denim and apparently transparent daywear first found its audience. "As I worked in the factory to invent" - the crockery rocks as he slaps the table for emphasis - "Lorella, who ran the shop, would phone to say what was selling - 'Oh, Roberto' she'd say, 'you'll never believe it' - and I would drive there to deliver more. All the time now young people ask me what they have to do to be famous, to find success, but the answer is simple - find something that no one has done before. Invent! As the reminiscences flow, we discuss his soon-to-be published autobiography (the title has just been changed from Under My Skin to The Colour of My Life). And eventually the real reason for Cavalli's early bath emerges. It wasn't a Cannes hangover, but that show. Karolina Kurkova on the runway at the Life Ball PHOTO: STEFANO MASSE/ONPHRAME To see all those designs was very emotional. Working with Eva can be up and down - she drives me crazy! - but last night she and I were holding each other afterwards, and saying look what we made together, look how fantastic. I was emotional. Franca [Sozzani, editor of Italian Vogue] was backstage and said 'stop being the primadonna'! But this was real! I was not acting then. So I needed to come back here to be alone, afterwards, to thank God for the moment, and to think. The extremely beautiful Eva, who met Cavalli when she was a contestant and he a judge at Miss Universe 1977, is two decades his junior and has become an increasingly influential part of the business: for years she has driven much of its output. Recently, though, Roberto has started hands-on designing again, he says, steering his formerly ailing Just Cavalli collection - "it had gone from 220 million euros a year down to 50 or 60 - I had always thought I was going to die rich so this could have been a disaster" - back to satisfying profitability. The secret is easy; I just make the old Cavalli, from 10, 15 years ago. The young love it. So he frets that when Eva stresses the ladylike at the expense of the sexy - "although she does a tremendous job" - that key, cor-blimey Cavalli message blurs a bit. Furthermore, their older son Daniele - an uncanny double for Adrien Brody - has taken creative charge of menswear. Although Roberto is proud of Daniele, he confesses his feelings are mixed: "Maybe I am jealous! I want to be part of his thoughts, for him to draw on my experience. I want him to know you have to start at the beginning, and that you can't know everything at the start. This morning, however, such frustrations are but trifles. Maybe I'm that big actor I talked about, but last night was very real, a moment. I'm already sorry I can't remember exactly how it felt. Ruminatively, Cavalli pats my shoulder: "Do you remember, when people were saying last December that the world was going to end? I shouldn't say this, amore, but I was waiting for it to happen! Just think, how fantastic, after millions of years that the world has existed, to get to be there at that moment! This might seem a mite extreme. But for a man whose daily grind demands once-in-a-lifetime partying, you can see why Armageddon might seem the perfect excuse to straighten his sunglasses and take one last cowboy-booted shimmy around that heel-scarred dance floor.