Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda Haute Couture F/W 2025.26 Rome

[Lola701]

The number of very expensive weddings where people are wearing Dolce & Gabbana means they're performing for a certain audience who likes what they see - and I'm not even talking Lauren Sánchez Bezos, these weddings have been a thing for a while.

All my issues of Tatler are stuffed away in a drawer, but I seem to remember at least one article a year about a wedding somewhere in the world where nearly everyone attending seems to be dressed in Dolce & Gabbana.

So these Alta Moda shows perform a function, but they're more about significance within a certain social circle than relevance to the general world of fashion.

Haute Couture or Alta Moda anyway for the past 30 years has only impacted fashion as a whole consistently through Chanel and Dior. Periodically, some houses were part of that conversation like Versace, Givenchy, Balenciaga, Valentino, Gaultier or Mugler but its such a niche and the clientele so specific (it’s a clientele that doesn’t care about the conversations impacting the fashion industry anyway) that the success of Dolce & Gabbana or even Elie Saab cannot be understood by your regular Fashion tiktoker who only analyzes fashion through his prism or his taste.

 

[Kanzai]

The menswear is too costumey and gay-ish for the husbands of those womenswear clients lol. Alta Moda will surely sell better, but I still find it rather odd and nonsense. I definitely don’t see Middle Eastern clients as the target for this, but rather China, US, Russia. The only things I truly like here are, of course, pieces like these — clearly referencing old couturiers.



Dolce&Gabbana

 

[Lola701]

^^
It’s weird but looking at this, I think about MGC and she probably did those dresses better because she made them very light, almost ethereal. There’s something very heavy about the way D&G are doing those techniques.

Some of their most iconic dresses, on their mainline, were maybe more spectacular, fluid and modern.

 

[yslforever]

Yes. Those red and yellow pleated and draped dresses come out heavy looking.
They wanted to impress and show off a combination of two techniques, braiding/draping adds too many layers to an already thickly pleated fabric and the end-result look a bit cardboard-like imho.
Maybe they should have gone for an elaborate trompe-l’œil pleating, either printed or slightly textured, but not the full 3D, so that the fabric before draping still remains one layer of thin and fluid material.

All that collection’ constructions are very heavy too me. I just don’t know if it’s on purpose or if they lack eyes, muses or égéries, to tell them or question them.
Did they ever have any actual muse ?

 

[jeanclaude]

Madame Grès with cardboard...

 

[reese06]

They do too much with these alta mods shows

 

[Nimsay]

I thought the show was marvellous. Dolce and Gabbana making another untouchable Haute Couture show that could never be RTW. the jewelry is visibly real - absolutely gorgeous semi precious necklaces. Of course withe the Dolce twist - adding an extra row of stones- innovating a classic silhouette.

 

[Kanzai]

I enjoy the show and whole atmosphere, they treat their guests very well – respect them for that. I think there's something very genuine and approachable about the way they organize it, partly because their culture of hospitality is so close to where I was born. I don't like most of their Alta Moda clothes but can't deny the effort they put in the shows. A lot of Chinese customers as you can see LOL, I mean Chinese are very fond of their late 2000s - 2010s aesthetics. If there hadn't been the 2018 scandal, they will have had bunches of brand ambassadors from China.