D&G’s fashion show features Neapolitan style
Since they launched their first haute couture collection in Taormina, Sicily, in 2012, Dolce & Gabbana’s spectacular three-day triple bill weekend has become an event to showcase Italian glamour. Chen Jie reports from Naples.
Located in southern Italy, the Mediterranean port city of Naples is one of the most ancient in Europe, and its contemporary urban fabric preserves the elements of its long and eventful history that date back to the 9th century BC. The rectangular grid layout of the ancient Greek settlement of Neapolis is still discernible in the historic center of the city, which was listed as world heritage by UNESCO in 1995.
In the 1950s, from the narrow and winding cobbled alleys full of pizza shops, craft stores and laundry hanging from the windows, walked out Italian diva Sophia Loren, the world famous actress who was raised in Naples.
And, on the evening of July 8, from the same alleys, emerged 99 young girls, in richly embroidered, painted, needle-pointed and gilded dresses, with flowers adorning their hair, just like Loren had, on different occasions.
This was Italian designer duo Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s 2016 Alta Moda high fashion show.
Since they launched their first haute couture collection in Taormina, Sicily, in 2012, the duo’s spectacular three-day triple bill weekend in early July, comprising the Alta Moda womenswear, Alta Sartoria menswear and high jewelry show, has become an event to showcase Italian glamor.
From Taormina and Venice to Capri and Portofino, they have always chosen a unique location for their private clients to explore the happy and colorful Italian lifestyle.
If a private club on the Capri seashore and Dolce’s home garden in Portofino are the perfect choice for high fashion, the old street in Naples reflects the designers’ way of striking a balance between high and low culture.
“My heart is in the street,” says Gabbana, while showing the press the collection at the church San Gregorio Armeno before the show.
His partner Dolce echoes him, saying: “The streets are interesting, every stone has character. This is the concept of Alta Moda, that every dress has a different personality.”
Dolce also shows the press the sculptures and wall paintings in the baroque church that he “borrows” for the dresses.
That evening, the 99 models walk out from the church, down the cobbled street and back up again.
The collection features all the trademarks of Naples, including a T-shirt emblazoned with the embroidered word “pizza”, as pizza originated in Naples, a “pizza” tablecloth puffed-sleeve blouse, a hat shaped like a “baba”, a local cake made with rum, and a soccer shirt embroidered with the name Maradona, the name of the legendary Argentinan soccer star whose career peaked while he played for Napoli.
However their main muse is Loren, the first Italian actress to win an Oscar in 1962 and the first artist to win an Academy Award for a foreign-language movie.
It is Loren who chose Naples for the event.
“She wanted Naples,” says Dolce, because it is the town that formed her, and became the backdrop of many of her movies.
When the 81-year-old Loren walked into the street accompanied by Dolce and Gabbana, the local people, babies and grannies, hung from apartment windows and lined every available rooftop to cheer, applaud and chant “Sophia”.
She was seated on a velvet throne, waving to the crowds, with her grandson, his wife and their children on either side.
A girl ran out from an ice cream store to present her with a fan, since the weather was a bit humid. She smiled, accepted it and passed it to her grand-daughter. The owner of the ice cream store again ran to give her one more fan.
Before the show, when a brass band — comprising senior musicians playing Neapolitan tunes — paraded in front of her, she joined in the singing of every song including O sole mio.
The display of a corseted swimsuit with a white satin sash with the words Miss Eleganza in gold beads reminded people that Loren started her career here winning a local beauty pageant at 14.
The designers also used many of Loren’s movies for inspiration.
The first look, a white off-shoulder shirt paired with a black pencil-skirt, decorously sizzling, was from her 1968 movie Questi Fantasmi (1968); a dress embroidered with sunflowers was inspired by her movie Sunflower (1970) and a white trapeze coat traced its origins to another classic, Marriage, Italian Style (1964).
“Sophia Loren is unique, a famous brand in Italy. In our eyes, she has always been a splendid vision, the symbol of the ideal woman, the quintessential icon of Italian style, an icon of femininity and seduction,” says Dolce.
“Sophia is a magnificent actress who made all the characters she played unforgettable. But she is also a real woman, passionate, Mediterranean and bordering on the cheeky. They (the Mediterranean women) love life and are aware of their beauty,” he says.
Gabbana says that to them, Naples and Loren represent authentic Italian style, where everything is an explosion for life.
“Sophia and Naples are two sides of the same coin: They represent elegance and extravagance, refined taste and eccentricity, a love of tradition and the desire for innovation, which generate a wonderful balance of contrasts,” he says.
In the designers’ minds, their Alta Moda garments are worn by unique women in the most unique moments of their lives. These unique women are their super rich clients from Russia, Asia, South America and the Gulf countries.
In their first year, they invited 100 people, and this time the number rose to 300.
Some VIP clients bought dresses backstage right after the show.
One of them even wore a dress from the first evening’s Alta Moda show at the second night’s dinner after the Alta Sartoria show.
Among the guests, some 50 were Chinese.
A woman in her 60s was accompanied by her husband and daughter.
She broke a foot right before the event, and was in a wheelchair all the time, but she still managed to look elegant with a high-heeled shoe on the other foot.
A young couple from East China’s Jiangsu province flew from other haute couture shows in Paris to Naples.
The husband, who works in the financial sector, says it is the first time he and his wife were invited to the Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda weekend, but added that they had already spent two weeks in Europe participating in similar events.
Meanwhile, Dolce & Gabbana also had a pop-up store in early July at Circolo Rari Nantes, which overlooks the Scogliera Santa Lucia seafront boulevard.
The boutique was crowded with Chinese clients during the weekend. Contact the writer at chenjie@chinadaily.com.cn
The streets are interesting, every stone has character. This is the concept of Alta Moda, that every dress has a different personality.” Domenico Dolce, Italian designer