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

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More than 400 guests from five continents and 1,400 employees from the global Dolce&Gabbana staff, including makeup artists, sales staff, seamstresses, dressmakers, stylists. Then there are the celebrities, the Italian and international press and about 200 models. A “family” of more than two thousand people gathered for four days in the village of Forte, about an hour’s drive from Cagliari, for the annual Dolce & Gabbana Haute Couture, High Jewelry and Haute Couture event. Every summer since 2012, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have chosen a location in Italy to present their most exclusive creations – clothes, jewellery and accessories that cannot be replicated – to another family of customers made up of haute couture (women’s wear), haute jewellery and haute couture (men’s wear): a slightly smaller family than the one that “invaded” the village of Forte, but still 400 people and growing since the first event, held in 2012. Taormina can accommodate dozens of guests.

“As soon as we return to Milan, we start thinking about 2025: to prepare for these days in the south of Sardinia, we start studying, recording ourselves, discussing with each other and with the people who have been working with us since last summer, immediately after the events we have organized Puglia – say Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana – But first we want to appreciate the extraordinary work done for the 2024 Collection: Sardinia is an extraordinary discovery. Or to be more precise: we knew the landscapes, colors and flavors of the North less than this part of the island, which fascinated us and led us to combine our creativity and haute couture vision with craftsmanship and local traditions, as has happened every year since 2012. “

In Milan, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana will also be witnesses to the success of the “From Heart to Hand” exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in early April, which traces the history of haute couture, jewellery and tailoring, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the Dolce&Gabbana brand, born in 1984. “We are not particularly attracted to anniversaries, even if they are as round as this one in 2024. We like to live and enjoy the present, not the past, and always focus on moving forward, because that is what fashion is: embracing the future as an opportunity for growth and change”, explain the two stylists and entrepreneurs, who have always proudly maintained their independence and are at the helm of one of the few Italian fashion groups with a turnover of well over 1 billion.

The Dolce&Gabbana Italian tour, which began in 2012 and crystallized at the Palazzo Reale, will continue in the summer of 2025 and who knows how many more years, but it is not yet certain if there will be changes in the layout of the show, including stages after 2023 in Puglia. «After Milan “From Heart to Hand” ‘We will travel to New York, London, Paris and Seoul,’ explains the designer. The night the exhibition opened, we were excited but also a little scared, wondering if anyone would come to see it in the following days and months. The success has exceeded all expectations and ‘From Heart to Hand’ will probably become the most viewed exhibition at the Palais in 2024. We are less interested in numbers or records than in the reactions collected through comments received through social media or other means. Our work, which finds its maximum expression in haute couture and haute couture, does not require a technical or even philosophical explanation. It is enough for people to observe the garments, jewellery and accessories up close to perceive their creative, artisanal and even spiritual values. ”

The same vision was present in the womenswear and menswear collections presented in Sardinia, but enhanced by theatrical performances. Every fashion show, from Milan Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week, is, if you look closely, a miniature theatre performance. However, if the stage is the Archaeological Park of Nora, where the haute couture parade takes place, or the Mediterranean scrub of the village of Forte, where the haute couture parade takes place, in the light and colours of an early summer sunset, the show becomes a theatre piece. The greatest occasion, very similar to the performance of an opera. The sets, the characters and the music are worthy of the author, the director (i.e. the stylist) and the actors (the models) of the play.