Live at the Forum! Dolce & Gabbana Bring Alta Moda to Rome

The Roman Forum at dusk—that was the monumental setting for Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda show tonight. The collection, which paraded down the Via Sacra, the first street in Ancient Rome, paid homage to both the city’s historical classicism and its 1950 and ’60s excesses, though a guest who knows the difference observed it was more Satyricon than La Dolce Vita.

Not far from the Basilica of Maxentius, a Julius Caesar-type and a lyre player took pictures with guests; curly haired men in colorful robes basked in the golden hour sun on the steps of the Temple of Antonius and Faustina; and in the central piazza under the shadow of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, theater troupes, armored soldiers, and vestal virgins crisscrossed the runway as people took their seats. It was a feast for the eyes—and that doesn’t even take into account the 450-plus Dolce & Gabbana clients from around the world who descended on the Eternal City for the show, each one trying to outdo the other in haute couture and high jewelry. Surrealismo!

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have been making Alta Moda collections for 12 years, building their clientele not just with their one-of-a-kind clothes, but with their spectacular locations: Taormina and Siracusa in Dolce’s native Sicilia, Venezia, Napoli, Portofino—the list goes on. Why put off Rome for so long? Dolce, who took his bow solo, having watched the show from the front row alongside Cher, Erling Haaland, Isabella Rossellini, and Christian Bale said, quite simply, “these people have a vision about beauty.” (Gabbana could not attend for family reasons.)

Since it’s the ne plus ultra of Italian cities—all roads lead there, etc., etc.—Dolce didn’t do anything by half-measures. It began with a deep red velvet cape over a strapless dress, the capitoline wolf (the symbol of the city) picked out in sequins on its skirt. Next, came a series of armored corsets of the sort the Roman emperors wore, made in gilded brass with flowing chiffon skirts. Stolae, the draped dresses popular in ancient times, were designed with padding at the torso to give them the three-dimensional folds of carved statues, an astonishing effect. Simpler versions in vivid colors were unadorned save for gilded brass belts, one of which read Vini Vidi Vici, though the sublimest of all were in silk velvet, one deep purple, the other yellow gold.

The mid-century flipside of all that were hourglass and fit-and-flare styles in fans of micro-pleats or mille-feuilles of sheared chiffon, “fatto-a-mano” at its finest, and remarkably light, as demonstrated at a press conference earlier in the day. Long capes made from twisted and tufted chiffon in bright shades of turquoise or orange conjured Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra, checking both boxes: L’Antica Roma and mid-century Hollywood. Other flourishes came in the way of all-over jewel embellishments or glossy black feathers or embroideries of marble busts and millennia-old coins.

The Forum is a unique place on earth where the architecture of centuries comingles. “Underneath Rome today is ancient Rome. So close,” Fellini once said. That was very much the effect of this Alta Moda show. References everywhere you looked, including some, like the Colosseum dress, about as subtle as Spartacus. The Alta Moda clients will eat them up. Dolce was mobbed after the show. Later at dinner he cast a critical eye over much of the industry, its reliance on formulas, its search for cool. “Sometimes, fashion kills fashion,” he said. “You saw it tonight, people want the energy.” When in Roma…