Nino Cerruti: Italian fashion great dies aged 91

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Nino Cerruti - one of the great Italian designers and fashion entrepreneurs - has died aged 91.

Reports say he passed away in hospital in Piedmont where he had checked in for a hip operation.

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Nino Cerruti pictured in 1989

He always insisted on trying on his own creations first. Many of them were kept at the textile factory his grandfather founded in the town of Biella in 1881.

"I have always dressed the same person, myself," he once said, according to AFP news agency.

With his experience in producing excellent fabrics at his family's textile mill, Cerruti went into the clothing business in the late 1950s.

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With a model in Capri in September 1968

He opened his first boutique in Paris in 1967.

When he asked male and female models to walk down the catwalk in the same clothes, he revolutionised fashion, AFP notes.

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Riding his bike on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice in 1985

In the '80s, he branched out into Hollywood, designing clothes for stars including Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone, Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks.

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At the Cannes Film Festival in 1995 with Antonio Banderas (L) and Prince Albert II of Monaco
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With Catherine Deneuve (C) and Fanny Ardant in Paris in 1999
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Dining with Anthony Hopkins in 1994
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From a portrait session in Italy in July 1987
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In his studio in 1991
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At home with his wife and son in Rome in 1988

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