“From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce & Gabbana,” an opulent exhibition dedicated to the brand’s high fashion collections, was consistently sold out over its five-month run last year at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. Beyond all the decadence and dolce vita, the show was on home turf, all but guaranteeing blockbuster success. Tomorrow, newly christened in French, “Du Cœur à la Main” makes a magnificent encore in Paris, filling a wing of galleries within the Grand Palais. How will it fare in the birthplace of haute couture?
Presented as a 10-part thematic journey through Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s Alta Moda (fashion), Alta Sartoria (tailoring), and Alta Gioiellleria (jewelry) designs since introducing their fatto a mano (handmade) approach in 2012, the exhibition is nearly identical to the original. When it opened last April, my Milan-based counterpart, Tiziana Cardini wrote up a vivid walkthrough, with Gabbana telling her that Alta Moda exists “to give ourselves the gift of unlimited creativity.”
Ensuring a seamless execution across the two cities is renowned curator, professor, and historian, Florence Müller, who has been involved in more than 150 exhibitions around the world and conceived the dazzling “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams,” which raised the bar (forgive me) for museum experiences of fashion.
Amidst the installation of multi-media, cinematic scenography by Agence Galuchat with production juiced up by IMG, Müller was on hand to provide Vogue with an exclusive tour of the Paris iteration. This begins with the newly restored rotunda entrance where digital displays of various inspirations put a futuristic spin on the forthcoming craft. Up a few flights of stairs is the most obvious homage to Paris: a full-length black tunic fronted with an Eiffel Tower in shimmering embroidery and strass, the garment deliberately unfinished as though nabbed from the atelier.
We proceed through each of the main rooms and anterooms, the conversation flowing as soundscapes—heartbeats, Verdi, Vivaldi, even broken glass—and scent-scapes corresponding to the designers’ ambition when staging the Alta Moda runway shows: the more immersive and sensory, the better. Meanwhile, across the 200-plus creations on display, elaborate workmanship depicts saints, Renaissance masterpieces, folkloric motifs, architectural marvels—every hand-embellished surface revealing the seemingly endless fount of Italian historical and cultural references.
We have spent well over an hour together by the time we reach the end, and when I ask Müller how long most visitors will spend discovering this Dolce & Gabbana fantasy world, she says two hours would not be unreasonable. In any case, with the exhibition opening ahead of the men’s and haute outure weeks and closing not long after the women’s ready-to-wear, it delivers a made-in-Italy fashion feast that is all about the oh là là. Here, some insights from Müller.
From the Palazzo Reale in Milan to the Grand Palais in Paris, what has changed?
This is almost as it was in Milan. In this first room, there are some paintings [by Anh Duong] that changed places, but the dresses were exactly positioned this way. We tried this idea of having an exhibition that can travel. And we tried to keep the décor as much as we could.
For the actual Alta Moda shows, the designers invite guests to locations around Italy. How have you attempted to recreate this experience and connect it back to the collections?
In the room about architecture and painting, what you see on the walls is the projection of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome with sculptures and paintings that are on the clothes—in one instance, done in needlepoint. I wanted to develop the idea that a garment is like an architecture and a garment is also ornamental, like how a painting in a palace is ornamental.
From one room to the next, it seems like the designers want us to feel as though we are in a kind of cinematic staging.
This is the collaboration between us, because I am also like that. I like to bring people into an emotional space, where the first impression is very beautiful, very aesthetic, and then you can discover more. I think an exhibition is a journey. You’re not seated like with a book or movie. You walk, you travel through spaces. Even if you have not been to Italy, these rooms bring you different visions into the culture.
This next room, titled ‘Divine Mosaics’ seems especially opulent. How do you feel about this as a description for what the designers do?
Opulence is a very good word. People ask me whether they are baroque, but it doesn’t encompass other ideas—like how you see here a representation of a Greek temple. [Domenico and Stefano] are very generous in their character, they’re quite extravagant, and it’s never enough what they give to their creation, what they give to the design, what they can do, what they can achieve. For them, this story is a dream come true.
In the room themed to Devotion, we see the use of gold and black that are quintessentially Dolce & Gabbana but as an even more extreme expression.
The starting point here is this sacred heart, which is a symbol that you can find in their iconography—in their jewelry, their emblematic bag. You have the idea of devotion through ideas of baroque gold and sculptural dresses. It’s an encounter between sacred and profane. This veil appeared in the collection in Syracuse for the 10th anniversary collection.
The exhibition follows the collections as they draw inspiration from so many regions and traditions, whether Puglia, Naples, Syracuse, Venice. How is this broadening our perception of Italy?
We are used to seeing “Made in Italy” in our bags, our silk made in Italy. But then through Dolce & Gabbana, you have more of an homage to the country itself—a very ancestral way of doing exquisite things. It’s not only a privilege reserved to France. The exhibition is an occasion to say this. And then, for many visitors who know Italy from holidays, it will be like going back in a certain way, like being transported to something they have seen already. Perhaps they haven’t been to Sicily, but they have been to La Scala in Milan.
Now that we are in the atelier-themed room, do the practices of Alta Moda and Alta Sartoria correspond to the practices of tailleur (tailoring) and flou (drapery) in French haute couture?
What is specific to Dolce & Gabbana is how the the dress is constructed on the corset. There is this idea of holding the body, holding the shape, modeling the shape, and having a beautiful waist, a beautiful breast form. This is their own approach. But of course the tailoring is very important. They started by doing the Alta Moda, and three years later they decided to do Alta Sartoria, since Domenico was first trained as a tailor because his father was a tailor. There is a painting here of a Madonna that was in his father’s workshop.
In the space that is an homage to Visconti’s Gattopardo (The Leopard), it is as though we are in the famous ballroom scene. What is the significance of the film for them?
They are really inspired by neo-realist cinema and Gattopardo is the reference—not only because of its romantic beauty. It expresses something they have in their process: a way of being between the past and the future. And the entire décor is drawn from the Palazzo Gangi in Palermo, where the film was shot. We had to send a photographer there in order to do the décor.
What about this room that is dedicated to opera and also involves a lavish food display.
You can hear music from the Cavalleria Rusticana opera that is like a leitmotif in many of their shows. Opera is very important to them, and one of the collections was presented on the stage of La Scala. Afterward, there was a lunch and that’s why you see the table like a banquet. This also represents their extravagant appetite, not only for beauty but for food. During the work on the exhibition, we would often end the days in a trattoria. And they would be like, ‘Try this, try that, eat more!’
How might we leave this exhibition with a little more Dolce & Gabbana in our lives?
I hope people will come away with a greater respect for all the workmanship, that they will have learned the beauty of what the artisans do. I think the dolce vita, this joy of life, is something people will keep, too.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
