Lady Libertà: Dolce & Gabbana take New York
Sasha Slater reports from D&G’S show, where £100,000 dresses were snapped up in seconds
There’s a Whatsapp group for Dolce & Gabbana couture clients so that they can take pictures of the outfits they want and beam them to the designers while the show’s still going on. It’s strictly first come, first served, so if you’re a little slow with your trigger finger, you’ll miss your moment. The blonde in headto-toe sequins seated next to me at Sunday night’s Alta Moda show in New York’s Metropolitan Opera House was poised, alert. “That’s the one everyone’s going to want,” she muttered grimly as one of the house’s signature corseted black dresses sashayed past, embellished with black and gold beading. She keeps her Alta Moda back home in San Francisco and most of her dresses are too gigantic to wear sitting in a car. “They’re as big as boats,” she told me.
It’s the first time the Italian designers have brought their twice-yearly couture extravaganza to New York, and they’ve done it in style, with a men’s Alta Sartoria tailoring collection at the Rockefeller Center, a jewellery presentation and, as the climax of the three-day circus, the Alta Moda at the Met.
It’s surprising that this is their first US show, since Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have a very American attitude to fame – they love it. Fashion designers on the whole are a shy bunch. They wear sunglasses to avoid eye contact, rarely give interviews, refuse to go out in public.
Dolce and Gabbana are the opposite. Anyone can see that if they follow Gabbana’s Instagram
feed, featuring him doing aerobics in a singlet and tiny shorts, or scoffing large plates of pasta “al ragu” wearing a granny headscarf. Dolce, meanwhile, is an opera obsessive who has, he says, “dreamed of doing a show at the Met for years”. After the show, the two Italians lapped up the applause, hugged clients, kissed them and posed for selfies. Gold confetti dropped from the atrium, and red, white and blue fireworks exploded in the Lincoln Center Plaza outside. If you want your clients to spend upwards of £100,000 on a scarlet jazz-era fringed flapper dress, you need to whip up a fashion frenzy.
Among the 100 looks (the show took almost an hour as opposed to the usual 12 minutes), there were classic Dolce & Gabbana silhouettes. Karlie Kloss’s opening gown, a scarlet feathered number with a giant upstanding matching headdress, was followed by a series of impeccably tailored black trouser suits and a floral chiffon tea dress worn by plus-size model Ashley Graham. But there were also looks for the home audience. Melania Trump is a fan of the label, and the designers have responded by crowning her a #Dgwoman. Perhaps they were thinking of her attending a G7 dinner when they dreamed up a patriotic scarlet coat with the giant face of the Statue of Liberty in blues and greys on the back, or a form-fitting Stars-andstripes sequinned cocktail dress. She could team this with a tiara featuring the Empire State Building, complete with a tiny King Kong perched on top. The clothes were witty, beautifully made, completely over-the-top.
“I was going to be home in bed with my chihuahua tonight,” another guest sighed as she held out her glass for a refill of Cristal champagne (£165 a bottle). “But I couldn’t resist.” She joined Catherine Zeta-jones and her daughter Carys Zeta-douglas, Dakota Fanning, Isabella Rossellini, Jamie Foxx and Ladies Kitty Spencer and Amelia Windsor at the show.
As the models paraded around the foyer and up the stairs to a soundtrack of Luciano Pavarotti belting out Puccini’s greatest hits, the audience was quite as eyecatching as the clothes. If ever there was an excuse to dress up, this was it. Men wore cream sequinned jackets, or black rhinestone-encrusted tailcoats with silver crystal piping, and in many cases their jewels – emerald-studded belts, huge yellow-diamond lapel pins, even large necklaces of coloured diamonds – were much larger than those of their wives. “I flew in from Dallas on my private jet for the Alta Sartoria,” said one gem-covered Texan man, “and then I flew back again today for this.” Flamboyance, spectacle, retail… Donald Trump would be proud.