The first presentation in Dolce & Gabbana’s annual couture extravaganza—a display of its high-jewelry line Alta Gioielleria—was supposed to take place on a summer’s eve at Hadrian’s Villa, in Tivoli, near Rome. At 6 P.M., the gods sent a rare thunderstorm. Hadrian hasn’t had a roof on his house for almost fifteen hundred years, so the designers delayed the glittering affair, waiting for a reversal of fortuna.
The label’s clients, almost five hundred of whom had gathered from more than two dozen countries, were happy to wait. Back at the Hotel de la Ville, four Floridian members of the hard core drank champagne and Hugo spritzes and eyed the sky in their respective Dolce getups: Suzy Buckley wore a purple sequin gown. Krista Rosenberg was in silver sequins, from a 2024 collection. Lydia Touzet had on a coppery number bought at the New York boutique. Eilah Campbell-Beavers wore a sequin ensemble, too, but crowned it with a tiara. The husbands wore—well, who cares?
Dolce & Gabbana is known for projecting optimism, and the women remarked that, weather-wise, they’d endured worse. In 2021, there’d been a hailstorm before the Alta Sartoria show, in Venice. Buckley recalled, “We got the strangest text alerting us that transportation was going to be moved two hours earlier than expected.” Scores of loyalists had to scramble to reschedule their hair and makeup appointments.
Isabella Rossellini, an old friend of the designers’, walked into the hotel lounge; heads swivelled. Later, she considered the shimmering sea of décolleté emerging from tight bodices. “Dresses like that,” she said, “I can’t do those anymore, at seventy-three.” She had on a flowy D&G jumpsuit in floral-patterned crêpe de Chine, a legend in pajamas.
With rain back at Hadrian’s place bathing the visage of the mighty statue of Mars, the event looked like it would be scuttled. Worries that Domenico Dolce, half of the designing duo, was likewise in tears were contradicted by one of the brand’s top American clients, Shawn Goodman. (Her Instagram handle is @dolcevitatoo.) She’d received a text from Dolce’s partner, Guilherme. “We’re cancelling,” she quoted aloud. “What can we do?”
The next night, at the Forum, only Beethoven thundered—from overhead speakers. With the sky purpling, the throng of clients (plus Cher) was sated. A legion of models walked a runway laid atop the Via Sacra, showing ninety new looks: a shiny gladiator’s belt spelling out “Veni Vidi Vici,” golden breastplates, a Trevi Fountain coat with rippling chiffon for water. Two actors hired to do Spartacus-style cosplay in velvet cloaks fell from their posts in the heat. A drone droned overhead. The faithful fans stood and applauded: we who are about to buy salute you.
Afterward, a swarm of black S.U.V.s ferried guests to the Hotel de Russie for dinner. There, Goodman, who is sixty-eight, reminisced about buying her first piece of Dolce & Gabbana, a pin-striped suit with corset underneath, around 1990. The brand, she said, has always fit her both physically and mentally. “I’m a little bit rock and roll for my age,” she said, “but I love the beauty.” She wore a gold-embroidered gown and gold piqué slippers—“All Alta Moda.” Goodman’s love runs so deep that her daughter allowed her to name her granddaughter Dolce. “If she were to marry Domenico Dolce’s nephew Saverio,” Goodman said, “she’d be Dolce Dolce!”
The night before the rainout, Goodman had attended an Alta Moda welcome party. “So I was dancing in my two-hundred-thousand-dollar gown,” she said. “All of a sudden, my partner twirled me, and whoops!” A shoulder strap snapped—couture wardrobe malfunction. “I ran over to Domenico and said, ‘Fashion emergency!’ ” she recalled. Dolce evaluated the damage with a tailor’s eye. “He says, ‘Oh, O.K. Shawn, turn around.’ He took the other strap, ripped it off the dress, and he tied the two in a knot in the back and made me a halter dress.”
The morning after the Forum show, clients would file into a showroom at the Westin Excelsior to place orders and put in dibs on the one-of-a-kind garments. Goodman had lined up the first appointment—eight-forty-five. ♦
An earlier version of this story mischaracterized Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Gioielleria line and misstated the name of Domenico Dolce’s nephew.
