Roberto Cavalli may have taken the "For Sale" sign off his eponymous company, opting to sit tight while the financial markets roil, but his optimism has not been affected judging by the Just Cavalli collection that opened Milan Fashion Week for the international set yesterday.

"The story of a trip that started in the colonial day and has yet to be finished," is how he described the inspiration for his younger line of multi-coloured, leopard-print chiffon separates, open-work raffia skirt suits, and haute patchwork frocks. But set against a backdrop of sand and dunes, it looked like nothing so much as the escapist wardrobe of someone on an enforced sabbatical making the best of things. The blown-up faces of Roberto and wife Eva that made up one of the prints bore little resemblance to the discrete sartorial subtlety usually advised in bad economic times.