Leopard Print & Leonardo DiCaprio: When Sarah Harris Spent A ...

I arrive at Heathrow airport with 25 kilos of Roberto Cavalli. A suitcase pulsating with power-shouldered blazers, flocked, lacy or sequined; silk blouses and sundresses printed in a smorgasbord of baroque, spots and oceanic life; putty-coloured laser-cut leather vests and matching slashed jackets. There are gold eagle collar pins, hardcore brassy bangles with panther heads, metal chokers fashioned into a pair of swan beaks, exorbitant heels (some with crystal lizards in flame orange, others in art-nouveau printed silk with corresponding trousers) and an array of lacquered metal minaudières, satin envelope clutches and handbags with hefty gold chains.

This party of colour and chaos is a maximalist’s dream – and two kilos over the weight restriction. “Is there something you could take out?” asks the check-in girl, oblivious to its contents. I tell her I wouldn’t know where to begin. She sighs, shoots me a disapproving look and slaps a neon “heavy” sticker on the suitcase.

I’ve been invited to the Cannes Film Festival with Roberto Cavalli and family to immerse myself in the Cavalli world, so this case isn’t packed with my usual vacation go-tos of blue denim cut-offs and grey T-shirts. In my world, a Breton top is as printed as I get, and navy is about as colourful. But the Cavalli world is a glamorously jet-setting, wildly techni-coloured whirl of fancy events and never-ending parties. In short, my usual wardrobe just wouldn’t cut it.

If I’m honest, this trunkload of sartorial unfamiliarity is starting to make me feel a little anxious. On arrival, I look at my temporary wardrobe and feel struck by paralysis. I don’t know where to start, so I start with everything, trying it all on and then taking it all off again. My hotel room looks like a Cavalli bomb has gone off. But then I realise, you can’t dilly-dally. It’s like pulling off a plaster, you just have to do it. Wear it. Something, anything. I opt for a full-length cotton sundress splashed in all manner of prints – shells, chains, driftwood – and tell myself it will all make sense when I reach the RC.

Boarding the RC, the Cavalli family yacht: “I feel rather like the high-spending wife of an important oligarch.”

The RC is the Cavalli’s five-bedroom iridescent yacht that changes colour from purple to green to gold depending on the heat of the sun. It floats on the glistening Riviera like a giant frog beetle, and inside it’s exactly as one might expect a Cavalli yacht to be. Lounging areas are scattered with fur throws and snakeskin- and leopard-print cushions. The spiral staircase boasts a bannister shaped like a scaly serpent, carved from a single tree trunk. The dining table is audaciously decorated in various printed silk tablecloths, from splashy pink hydrangeas to butterflies and leopard spots. It’s set with Cavalli zebra-striped crockery (everything here is branded Cavalli, from the vodka to the wine to the glasses we drink from), clashing silk napkins accessorised in gold, coiled-snake napkin rings and a centrepiece of coral decadently draped in strings of pearls. The food is all shipped from Tuscany; today’s plump mozzarella is worked into a braid and looms large on a platter.

“Ciao! Sarah!” beams a barefoot Eva Cavalli. With honeyed hair and a sun-kissed complexion, she is extremely pretty and appears much younger than her 52 years. She wears black trousers with an orange-piped fuchsia silk blouse. We have never met each other before but are instantly the very best of friends. “A drink? Some champagne.” Her long diamond necklace and vintage gold ring the size of a golf ball studded with diamonds (gifts from Roberto) are blinding in the sun.

First sighting of 73-year-old Roberto Cavalli: mahogany-tanned and shirtless, in blue leopard-print trunks. Sun-dazed, he hacks off a piece of mozzarella which flops onto the silk tablecloth. He picks it up with his fingers and puts it straight down the hatch. Roberto is a rare sight during the day, preferring instead to be alone at the front of the boat to focus on the task at hand: sunbathing. He is very good at it.

The Cavalli crew are a likeable bunch. At the head are Roberto and Eva. They met at a Miss Universe competition where she was an 18-year-old competitor and he was on the judging panel. She didn’t take the title, but she did win a car from another beauty pageant and as soon as she finished school in Austria, she drove to Florence with a girlfriend to visit him. “My friend went home after two weeks and I never left,” she shrugs. Also in the gang: Eva’s good friend Sharon Stone (first sighting: lunchtime, make-up free with combed wet hair and dressed in nothing but a white dressing gown – she looks sensational) and her sister, Kelly; the Cavalli sons, Daniele, dapper beyond his 27 years (and best friends with Adrien Brody), who heads up Cavalli menswear, and Robert, a 19-year-old studying for a degree in fashion management; and, last but by no means least, the archetypal Cavalli woman, Polina Margasova, a 31-year-old former model from Siberia who, with her mane of bouncing, glossy curls, is a doppelgänger for Shakira. She flits between her home in Manhattan’s West Village and a London apartment in Knightsbridge, but in truth, she’s rarely anywhere for long – as Eva’s best friend she often finds herself wherever the Cavallis are. She is the sort of girl who happily shares her lip gloss and who knows everyone and everything, even how to eat a pumpkin-seed bread roll when you’re famished but so corseted in a gown you can barely breathe. “Darling,” she purrs, “just eat the crust, we leave the rest...” I like her. Boys do, too. A lot.

Opting for a full-length printed sundress on the first day.

It soon becomes apparent that the only purpose of the day is to prepare for the night ahead. A late rise, a light lunch, hair and make-up – which can begin as early as 3pm – then countless fittings at the Roberto Cavalli dressing suite at Hôtel Martinez, a Cannes hotspot on the Boulevard de la Croisette, where a club sandwich costs £40.

It is a somewhat non-glamorous room with an adjacent, even less glamorous room that houses a Cavalli team of six who shuffle the incoming and outgoing gowns like a postal sorting office. Incoming: casualties of the night, ripped and frayed with broken zips and heel-caught hemlines. Outgoing: pristine and full of promise of what the evening may bring – and there really is something terrifically promising about these gowns, the way they shine and sparkle, all destined for good times. There are a further three seamstresses and three embroiderers who all work under the direction of the worldwide VIP manager, Grégoire Tine, altering, mending, steaming.

I’m looking for eveningwear options. There are some 70 red-carpet-ready outfits hanging here. Every one is up for grabs; from the plunging white gown that hugged Cindy Crawford’s figure only a few days ago to the long-sleeved pewter-sequined fishtail number that Alessandra Ambrosio so skilfully paraded at a premiere yesterday. The room is like a temporary holding pen; every dress screams: “Take me out!” I opt for a (relatively) simple gown: a strapless, floor-skimming tiered column in black and white.

While Roberto Cavalli flies over to St Tropez to make final checks on the new store and restaurant scheduled to open there later this summer, the rest of us have an impromptu invitation to the premiere of Behind the Candelabra. We sit behind Michael Douglas and Matt Damon and actually stay for the film, unlike many who, I discover, attend only for the purpose of walking the red carpet before exiting out the back down a fire escape. (Here, it’s all about the red carpet, less so actually seeing the film.) No one seems to mind, least of all the designers. The red carpet is big business: last year Kate Beckinsale wore a £90,000 Cavalli gown to the Oscars; the following day, the Los Angeles Cavalli store took 12 orders for it.

The main event tonight is the prestigious De Grisogono dinner. It’s held at Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, a 35-minute drive away – longer in traffic, and in Cannes there is always traffic, but not for Sharon Stone (dressed in a red one-shouldered, slashed-to-the-thigh, floor-trailing Cavalli dream), Eva (tuxedo combo), myself and Robbie. Bruno, Stone’s driver, arranges for a police escort to whizz along our Mercedes convoy. Two police bikes ahead, one behind, our hazard lights blinking, we go like the clappers. My Cavalli metal box clutch slides off my slippery chiffon-clad lap at every turn. A note on wearing Cavalli: everything chinks. The metal cuffs loaded on my wrists chink against the clutch; so, too, do the eight buckles – 16 in total – on the 5-inch heels which my feet are strapped into. A Cavalli girl likes to be seen and heard, but right now I wouldn’t prefer to be wearing anything else. I’m thankful for the remains of a suntan from a recent holiday (everyone here is tanned), but it occurs to me that I’m not wearing nearly enough make-up. My usual lick of mascara just isn’t enough with these gowns and these guests, all groomed to perfection. I’m even considering lipstick.

Hanging out with the RC crew.

We arrive to media hysteria. Camera shutters clatter like a swarm of bats, yet Sharon – at the nucleus of this fanfare and now on the arm of Fawaz Gruosi, the founder and president of the Swiss fine jewellery house (a tanned, wealthy-looking man with a love-drunk grin) – graciously makes her way through without fret. Well, it’s easy when you have someone employed, as she does, purely to shine a mini-torch on your train and preciously guard it so no one comes within a metre, let alone gets anywhere near to actually – God forbid – treading on it. It’s a well-choreographed waltz that proves flawless. Everyone else however, myself included, can’t clear five strides without being unceremoniously halted because someone has stepped on the tail end of their dress. These dresses require a five-metre buffer zone, and these parties don’t allow for it.

We eat (veal) and head out to the after-party on the private terrace overlooking the infinity pool. We have access to a roped-off area, on a central table where everyone can look at us. Because seemingly everyone does want to look at us. (By “us”, I mean Sharon and Eva.) Other guests pretend to have their own conversations, but their eyes can’t help darting back. We don’t sit on the sofa in the traditional sense but rather on the back of it, heels on the seat, filling our glasses with champagne, dancing and whooping to Daft Punk. There is something about a high-octane dress that makes you feel, well, high-octane. Sharon leaves; Eva and I depart at 4am. Polina stays, teasing the boys as they buzz round her.

The following day, I plunge for the three-piece trouser suit. It’s a swirly patterned peach and chartreuse display with extra-wide, extra-long trousers, a sheer chiffon blouse and a matching single-button jacket with built-up shoulders. It is the most colourful ensemble I have worn. Ever. I feel conspicuous. It doesn’t look like me at all –rather the image of a high-spending wife of an important oligarch. But within this context of Cannes, it’s surprisingly easy to play the role. I imagine for a moment wearing this to the Vogue offices on a summer’s day. These aren’t clothes destined for desks, but for the twinkling scenes of moneyed European resorts, made for promenading and sparking imaginations. Every passer-by on the Croisette looks at me, some even talk to me – in Italian. (It’s either my new friends or my new look, but most assume I’m from Italy.)

It’s the day of the RC boat party, but as dark clouds tumble over, our host is getting nervous. I apply eyeliner, lots of it – it’s become my new routine, AM and PM – and step into a whisper-weight art-nouveau and leopard-print gown, provocatively slit up to there, with filigree leather bib and lariat fastening at the back. I also strap myself into another pair of 5-inch heels, taking some comfort in the knowledge that I will discard them as soon as I arrive on board. But this is a Cavalli party and it turns out they positively encourage the wearing of heels, on boats and elsewhere. It rains, as it threatened to. Note to self: rain and trains do not mix well. I constantly have to scoop up the hemline while carefully navigating my way around these daring slashed-to-hip slits. I even monitor the way I stand and sit, but regardless of trickery, this dress makes you want to stay up all night long.

The following morning, with eyeliner and straightened hair (the grooming is improving), dressed in a deer-print kaftan with a wonderfully billowing back (this I love – so comfortable, so exotic) and an armful of bangles (so noisy, the constant clashing and clanking), I observe the damage to the RC’s smooth leather floor, edged in polished walnut. It’s heart-wrenchingly scarred with scratches, scuffs and dents from revellers’ heels. There are whisperings that the cost of repair will be in the region of £255,000, but no one seems too alarmed; Roberto continues to sunbathe at the front of the boat and Eva is reeling from the success of the night before. “I love to host parties! If I could, I would never go out and have everybody come to me.”

In the Cavalli dressing suite at Hôtel Martinez, trying on a gown worn by Cindy Crawford.

No time to dwell: tonight is the glamorous Amfar gala, the annual Cinema Against Aids fundraising event and the hottest ticket on the Cannes calendar. Roberto Cavalli is the official décor sponsor, outfitting not only several guests, but also 90 tables and 900 chairs, each bound in Cavalli silk. I’m wearing floral. (Floral!) I have never worn floral before now, least of all big, blossoming roses blooming over a floor-trailing gown of white plissé silk with chained empire-line and drop waist, the whole thing suspended by the tiniest of spaghetti straps. I like it. It looks easy and effortless but inside it’s full of clever, corseted construction.

I discover florals are a mood-changer. I feel glamorously bohemian in this gown, and I’ve never felt bohemian before. These new clothes, all with their varying prints and silhouettes have the power to alter my entire disposition: florals (bohemian), leopard (feisty), deer print (exotic), printed trouser suits (moneyed, empowered).

By now, I know the dresses so well that when fellow Cavalli-clad guests float by – Kylie Minogue in Grecian white, Karolina Kurkova in cut-out black – it’s like seeing old friends. We eat (veal – again), the auction begins and bidding wars ensue. Roberto wants the one-of-a-kind motorbike commissioned by Redemption Choppers. But he has a limit. He bids up to £420,000, then bows out. Sharon wants Andy Warhol’s Liz, 1964 – signed by the artist. “Buy that for me!” she begs Roberto. His hand obediently rises to the tune of £255,000, but Tamara Ecclestone outbids him at a cool £500,000. The diamond necklace is next – a heritage piece from the collection of a private European family, it is made up of 1,518 diamonds totalling 53 carats. Eva goes up to £255,000 but it sells for £300,000. No big loss – she admits she isn’t really going through “a jewellery phase” at the moment. As her gems sparkle in the light, I begin to wonder what her definition of a jewellery phase might look like. Including my favourite lot – a ride into space with Leonardo DiCaprio, who looks on, bemused, at the table along from us – the night banks £21 million. Another after-party. I lose Polina (she emerges the next day, having not slept a single wink) and leave the festivities at 4.30am.

Cannes is winding down; the Cavallis, anything but. We decamp, party still intact, to Vienna for the Life Ball, and no sooner have we landed than we are invited to the opera. It’s cold and I’m craving grey cashmere, jeans and biker boots. But from the bottom of the case (rifling through, one can’t see the wood for the trees, such is the depth of kaleidoscopic print and pizzazz), I unearth a pair of trousers in the shape of shiny satin flares. They’re black-and-white floral and super-long; Cavalli trousers are made with Nadja Auermann-scale legs in mind but, I’m told, they are supposed to bunch up and pool a little on the floor; all the models at the show wore them like that. I partner them with the matching blouse and a black velvet-flocked blazer, its satin lapel pinned with a stonking brooch (which catches my hair, so I pull it up into a high ponytail). I feel expensive. Team Cavalli takes a box. Eva dozes off midway through the first half (a Cavalli girl has to catch up on sleep whenever and wherever she can) and when the curtain falls for the interval, she says, yes, she enjoyed the first half very much – but “Basta!” It’s time to move on. Cavalli women never stay in one place for long.

At the Cannes Amfar gala with Roberto Cavalli, which banked £21 million for Aids research in 2013.

The driver zips us to Sky Bar, a high-rise lounge overlooking the glazed Chevron-tiled rooftop of the majestic St Stephen’s Cathedral. The maître d’ has the best table in the house for us, and duly delivers champagne and strawberries and trays of desserts. “Sarah,” Eva says casually, as if she’s about to ask me to pass the littlest, most perfect panna cotta I’ve ever seen, “you want to come to dinner tonight with Bill Clinton?” I accept. She smiles. “You are just like me! Always open to new opportunities!”

In truth, I’m exhausted. My eyes are as dry as sawdust and the balls of my feet aren’t so much throbbing as on fire. When I mention this to Eva, she shrugs. “Ah yes. Well, I only wear comfortable heels.” I glance down at her feet. She is wearing the same shoes as I am. We are late, and enter the hushed room during Bill Clinton’s speech on the fight against Aids, but he doesn’t seem to mind and acknowledges Eva with a warm smile (Clinton and the Cavallis have fundraising in common). It’s an intimate gathering at the Palais Szechenyi that includes Austrian president Heinz Fischer, various officials and other notables whom we don’t know. Everyone is incredibly formal, appropriately dressed in grey suits and sensible-looking shiny shoes. I shine, too – my brooch is like a beacon, which I’m suddenly very aware of. This get-up feels a little too expensive among the grave seriousness of this room, these people and the topic at hand, but it does come with a certain authority and the courage of one’s own conviction, which feels empowering. Regardless, Clinton seems to like the look of it when he shakes my hand later.

It’s our last night, and time for the Life Ball (where we are served, yes, veal). I have one final dress to pour myself into, a one-shouldered, plissé-pleated gold leopard Lurex number with a huge train. It is the ultimate Cavalli showstopper and completely out of my comfort zone – I think. The lines have become so blurred, I no longer know what’s “me” and what isn’t. One thing is certain; I defy anyone not to feel good in a gown like this, or any other Cavalli dress for that matter (although, I must admit, getting out of it later – with the help of housekeeping, who have become a regular fixture in my hotel room at 4am call times – also feels pretty good). I have never worn so much floral/animal-print/colour, but I would gladly wear that first sundress, the deer-print kaftan, any of the printed trousers and all the gowns all over again.

As the trip draws to an end, conversation turns to the next city, the next party. For most, it’s straight to the Monaco Grand Prix and then to the Venice Biennale. And so the circuit continues, even though, right now, everyone is weary and craving rest (for me, from prints and parties). I long for a night in, but I can’t ever imagine Eva slumped on a sofa in front of the TV. “Never!” she laughs. “Not once.” Whatever downtime she gets is spent dining with friends and playing cards – she is a mean poker player. I ask her if she ever finds the Cavalli lifestyle exhausting. “Yes,” she admits. “Now I need a few days to recover.” Or, I suggest, a few weeks? “No! A few days is OK,” before adding, “but we have fun, don’t we?”