Roberto Menichetti

Roberto Menicetti was born in Buffalo, USA, in 1966. He comes from an Umbrian family of tailoring magnates from whom he has acquired his own factory in Umbria, Italy, which now manufactures Burberry clothing.

From 1992 till 1998, he worked as assistant designer first to Claude Montana and then to German fashion designer Jil Sander to develop some of fashion's most innovative weaves.

In early 1998 Menicetti joined Burberry, the traditional London fashion house. He designed their Prorsum lines for men and women. He has succeeded in updating Burberry from a provider of London tourist clothing to a world-class fashion house.

He stayed for 3 years with Burberry, and left them in mid-2001.

Menicetti is an adventure sports buff - testing a new sail for his windsurfing board in Hawaii in 1998. He travels regularly to Tibet and Jerusalem as well as other corners of the globe. He can be recognized by his long ponytail hair style.

In September 2001, Menicetti was appointed Creative Director of Cerruti by the Finpart Company, who had purchased Cerruti. However, he was not very happy there and left them in March 2002 after only 6 months. Roberto has been keen to start up his own label, and has now secured financial backing from Richard Fischer, chairman emeritus at Morgan Stanley. .

The first collection from Menicetti's new label was shown during New York Fashion Week in February 2004. It was a low key presentation paring things down as much as possible without a jeans line or secondary line. It was about clean lines, luxurious Italian fabrics and a simple mix-and-match palette of white, black, browns, blue and pink. His five year plan includes footwear, fragrances and more.

In April 2004 Roberto was appointed Artistic Director at French house of Celine, replacing Michael Kors.

At the end of May 2005, Celine announced that Menicetti would be leaving the house after only two seasons. Neither of his collections settled well with critiucs or won over his LVMH owners.