Dolce & Gabbana Gives Its Alta Moda Clients a Night at the Opera with Naomi Campbell, Karlie Kloss and more
Dolce & Gabbana Gives Its Alta Moda Clients a Night at the Opera—The Metropolitan Opera
Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda clients jockeyed for seats last night like they were angling for a view of Maria Callas herself. The 100 looks that crisscrossed the atrium of the Metropolitan Opera House were one of a kind and strictly first come, first served—where you’re seated counts when the couture competition is this fierce. The house tracks client requests via an exclusive WhatsApp group, and with Dolce & Gabbana devotees from as far away as Russia, the Middle East, China, and Great Britain in the crowd, it typically begins buzzing as soon as the show starts. Oh, to be a fly on that virtual wall!
The evening’s opulent show capped off a weekend of Alta activities. Friday was jewelry night (Sarah Jessica Parker played model at the auction), and Saturday was devoted to the Sartoria menswear show (Liza Minnelli was the star attraction at Rockefeller Center’s Rainbow Room). But the New York festivities wouldn’t have happened at all if not for an invitation from the Metropolitan. At a late-morning press conference, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana recalled their first time at the Met; they attended with Isabella Rossellini as guests of Luciano Pavarotti, the world-famous tenor for whom they designed stage clothes. “It was Tosca sometime in the ’90s,” Gabbana remembered. “Tonight, we have a lot of memories.”
The designers recently underwrote the Italian translation of Met titles, hence the open door. Naturally, the opera inspired the clothes they presented (as it did when they presented a couture collection at Milan’s opera house, La Scala), but more than that, the collection was a high-low ode to New York and the U.S. of A. The Statue of Liberty was embroidered on the back pocket of camouflage army fatigues; photo prints of Times Square traffic decorated a silk pajama set; Old Glory was reproduced on many pieces (most piquantly overstitched with star-spangled dollar signs); and “God Save America” was intarsia’d into the lantern sleeve of a mink coat. God save us, indeed. Politics and the “current state of things” briefly entered the picture when Rossellini quoted Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus”—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses”—in her introductory speech, but for the most part Dolce and Gabbana occupied themselves with celebrating America rather than problematizing it.
And what a celebration it was. After Naomi Campbell took her show-closing spin, resplendent in a black satin bustier and Times Square ball skirt, there was a gold confetti finale, a fireworks display above Lincoln Center’s plaza fountain, and dinner on the Met’s monumental stage under the Franco Zeffirelli set for Puccini’s Turandot, with giant urns spilling over with roses, sweet peas, and weeping tulips. Truly a pinch-me-am-I-dreaming moment. But if that sounds lavish, it doesn’t come close to matching the clothes, with their nights-on-Broadway sequins and crystals and electric-colored feathers and fur (D&G hasn’t gone faux, like much of the rest of the fashion business). And we haven’t even gotten to the headdresses yet. Suffice to say they were major. Counterbalancing all that OTT were a few gloriously sublime dresses—a shapely LBD with gold embroidery outlining the back had this writer dreaming of that WhatsApp number.
A PR rep estimated that 300 or so employees were in New York via Italy for the weekend’s shows; what’s truly astounding is that in less than two weeks, the designers will pull off a similar feat in Mexico City, where they’ll present an entirely new Alta Moda collection. Some of last night’s clients will likely attend the Museo Soumaya activation. People-watching has always been part of the fun of fashion shows, but nothing comes close to D&G Alta events. We saw a big spender with her own personal paparazzi in tow; a client who buys couture “by the meter,” as in she has literal meters of Alta Moda on the rack in her closet at home; and one Sylvia Mantella, a Toronto philanthropist in a gown so epic she required assistance to squeeze into her seat. It was captivating to be adjacent to all that staggering wealth.
At dinner, a representative from the Met toasted the designers. “Cole Porter was once asked what someone needed to do to be a star,” she said. “He replied simply: Sparkle.” It’s a philosophy that Dolce & Gabbana lives—and thrives—by.
