Dolce&Gabbana's Sardinia, a dream of fashion and craftsmanship

Over four hundred guests arrived from the five continents and another 1,400 people from Dolce&Gabbana's worldwide staff, including make-up artists, salespeople, dressmakers and stylists. Plus celebrities, Italian and international press and about two hundred models. An "extended" family of more than two thousand people gathered for four days at Forte Village, about an hour from Cagliari, for the annual Dolce&Gabbana haute couture, high jewellery and haute couture events. Since 2012, every summer Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana choose a location in Italy and show and present their most exclusive creations - clothes, jewellery and accessories that cannot be duplicated - to a different family, made up of the haute couture (women's), haute jewellery and haute couture (men's) customers: a slightly less extended family than the one that 'invaded' Forte Village, but still made up of 400 people and growing steadily since the first event in 2012, which took place in Taormina for a few dozen guests.

"As soon as we get back to Milan, we will start to think about 2025: to prepare these days in the south of Sardinia, we had begun to study, document, compare ourselves with each other and with the people who work with us since last summer, immediately after the events we hosted in Puglia - say Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana - But first we would like to enjoy a little of the extraordinary work done for the 2024 collections: Sardinia was an extraordinary discovery. Or rather: we knew the landscapes, colours and flavours of the north, less so of this part of the island, which has captivated us and led us, as has been the case every year since 2012, to combine our creativity and vision of haute couture with local craftsmanship and traditions'.

In Milan, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana can also enjoy the success of the exhibition 'From the Heart to the Hands', which opened at the beginning of April at the Palazzo Reale and traces the history of haute couture, jewellery and tailoring and coincided with the 40th anniversary of the Dolce&Gabbana brand, which was founded in 1984. "We are not particularly attracted by anniversaries, not even when they are round like this one in 2024. We like to live and enjoy the present, not the past, and always look forward, because this is what fashion is all about: embracing the future as an opportunity for growth and change," explain the two fashion designers and entrepreneurs, who have remained fiercely independent and at the helm of one of the few Italian fashion groups with a turnover well in excess of one billion.

Dolce&Gabbana's Italian Grand Tour that began in 2012 and crystallised at the Palazzo Reale will continue in the summer of 2025 and who knows for how many more years, but it is not certain that the exhibition layout will change to include stops after the 2023 one in Puglia. "After Milan "From the heart to the hands" it will go to New York, London, Paris and Seoul," the stylists explain. "On the evening of the exhibition's inauguration we were excited, but also a little scared, we wondered if in the following days and months people would come to see it. The success exceeded all expectations, 'From the Heart to the Hands' will probably be the most viewed exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in 2024. We are not so much interested in numbers or records, but rather in the reactions we gathered in the comments received via social media or in other ways. There was no need for technical, let alone philosophical explanations of what we do and which has its highest expression in haute couture and haute couture. It was enough for people to see the clothes, jewellery and accessories up close for them to perceive the creative, artisanal, perhaps even spiritual value.

In the women's and men's collections that paraded in Sardinia, one finds the same vision, but enhanced by staging. Every fashion show, starting with those of the Milan or Paris fashion weeks, if you look closely, is a miniature theatre show. If, however, the stage is the archaeological park of Nora, where the haute couture fashion show took place, or the Mediterranean maquis of Forte Village, where the haute couture fashion show took place, with the lights and colours of the early summer sunset, the show is transformed into a theatrical production of the grandest occasions, something very similar to the staging of an opera. With sets, figures and music to match the authors and directors of the show (i.e. the stylists) and the actors (models).