Italian fashion pioneer Nino Cerruti dies

Rome: Pioneering Italian fashion designer Nino Cerruti, who introduced "casual chic" into men´s fashion and in his heyday dressed Hollywood stars, has died at the age of 91.

He died at the Vercelli hospital in the northwest region of Piedmont, where he had been admitted for a hip operation, the Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported on its website.

"A giant among Italian entrepreneurs has left us," said Gilberto Pichetto, deputy minister for economic development.

Cerruti, who created the first deconstructed jacket in the 1970s, was one of the leading figures in men´s ready-to-wear fashion in the 20th century, with a look that was at once stylish and relaxed.

"I want men more free in their elegance, more elegant in their freedom," he once said.

Tall and slim, Cerruti always insisted on being the first to try on his creations, many of which he kept stored away at the woollen mill his grandfather founded in the northern town of Biella in 1881.

"I have always dressed the same person -- myself," he once said.

Born in 1930 in Biella, Cerruti dreamt of becoming a journalist.

But after his father died when he was 20, he was forced to give up his philosophy studies to take over the family textile factory.

In the 1960s, he met Giorgio Armani and hired him as a creator of men´s fashion.

The duo made a profound mark on the world of fashion, before Armani branched out with his own fashion house in 1975.

Cerruti opened his first shop in Paris in 1967, launching his luxury brand on the path to global fame.

"Clothes only exist from the moment someone puts them on. I would like these clothes to continue to live, to soak up life," he said.