Lycra

Despite difficult times, and at the very beginning not liking cycling's "helmets, Lycra and baffling" terminology, she sees her future in the sport.

Because once, that ravenous desire for uniqueness — seen in our skin-tight lycra with a cartoonish depiction of what looks like the Milky Way, worn with studded Jeffrey Campbell Litas for good measure — was a vehicle powerful enough to launch someone into transcendence.

"So yes there may be a layer of Lycra between us, but you are still there and still having to truly immerse yourself in this scene."

Cavalli was largely unknown outside Europe, until, in the 1990s, he reinvented luxury denim, first with the sandblasted look and then, in a stroke of invention, by putting Lycra in jeans to make them fit snugger and sexier.

In 1995, he collaborated with Lycra to create the first stretchy jeans.