– From May 14 to August 13, 2025, Dal Cuore Alle Mani: Dolce&Gabbana arrives at Palazzo Esposizioni Roma.
Excess conceals, but does not reveal.”
— Roland Barthes
Following its presentations in Milan and Paris—where it was met with unprecedented attendance—the exhibition opens a new and eagerly awaited chapter in the neoclassical space designed by Pio Piacentini and inaugurated in 1883. A symbolic venue for contemporary visual culture and shared heritage, it is the largest exhibition and cultural space in central Rome.
This return to Italy is imbued with new meaning: not a simple reinstallation, but a narrative reimagined for this specific context, where the creations of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana enter into dialogue with the neoclassical architecture, offering a unique stage for a journey not only through fashion but also through time, art, memory, and material.
Promoted by the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, under the patronage of Roma Capitale, and produced and organized by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo with IMG, the exhibition is curated by Florence Müller with scenography by Agence Galuchat. It brings together over two hundred unique Dolce&Gabbana creations—icons of Italian Alta Moda style.
A showcase of unparalleled craftsmanship and artisanal excellence, Dal Cuore Alle Mani: Dolce&Gabbana is an open love letter to Italian culture, which has always served as a muse and source of inspiration for Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. The exhibition traces their extraordinary creative process—from the heart, where ideas originate, to the hands, through which those ideas take form. It also features work by selected visual artists in dialogue with Dolce&Gabbana’s creativity.
The exhibition unfolds through a succession of large immersive rooms covering approximately 1,500 square meters, exploring the brand’s unconventional and creative approach to luxury—elegant, sensual, and unique, but also ironic, irreverent, and revolutionary. The creations are organized around themes highlighting the rich Italian cultural influences at the root of Dolce&Gabbana: from art to architecture, exceptional craftsmanship to folklore, from music to opera, ballet, theatre, and of course, the allure of la dolce vita.
Beauty is a paradox: it needs excess to be noticed, but balance to be loved.”
— Christian Dior
Among the most remarkable sections:
The Beauty of “Handmade”
Celebrated within the monumental architecture of Palazzo delle Esposizioni, archive footage and runway images reflect the impact of events that blend fashion and performance, engaging all the senses. The creations revisit traditional artisanal techniques from various Italian regions, reinterpreted through the lens of Haute Couture. Embroidery, lace, and trimmings highlight the refinement of tailoring. Transparencies, structures, and volumes reveal unmatched craftsmanship: from cuts to corsetry, from flou to draping—each element sculpts the body as a narrative landscape.
The encounter between the designers and Anh Duong—an artist born in France with Spanish and Vietnamese roots—crowns an intense dialogue between art and fashion. Duong began her artistic career in New York in 1988. Presenting herself in fantastical atmospheres, her paintings explore self-portraiture through the visual prism of the intimate diary. The self-portraits shown here for the first time—created between 2012 and 2024—depict the artist wearing Dolce&Gabbana’s most iconic Alta Moda and Alta Gioielleria pieces. This introspective journey, questioning being and appearance, resonates with Dolce and Gabbana’s stylistic explorations and evokes Italy: Taormina, Milan, Venice, Capri, Portofino, Naples, Palermo, Lake Como, Agrigento, Florence, Syracuse, Apulia...
A sensory overload: extreme visual stimuli, aesthetic saturation, hyperbolic exuberance—a vertiginous, self-referential, disorienting experience.
The Art and Craftsmanship of Glass
Garments, mirrors, and chandeliers engage in a play of reflections, illustrating a key source of inspiration. In the 2021 Alta Moda collection presented before Venice’s Palazzo Ducale, crystal-embroidered pieces paid homage to the Serenissima’s glassmaking excellence. Elsewhere, the designers explore reflective materials or evoke chandelier splendor. Glass embroidery and silver dresses echo the sparkle of Barbini’s master mirrors and the iconic chandeliers of Barovier & Toso.
A redundant, ornamental luxury—attractive and mesmerizing. A room saturated with visual stimuli, where sumptuous dresses, chandeliers, and mirrors multiply color, shape, and reflection in a baroque aesthetic verging on hallucination. Every detail competes for attention, generating a visual symphony bordering on delirium.
White Baroque
With sculptural garments and stucco-inspired designs, this room blends interior decoration and fashion in an homage to White Baroque. Fascinated by the art of Giacomo Serpotta (1656–1732), the designers reinterpret in fabric the elaborate stucco interiors popular in 17th- and 18th-century Sicily. They embrace the dramatic tension between the simplicity of white and the opulence of compositions filled with complex poses and flowing drapery—a profusion of cherubs, volutes, pillars, niches, caryatids…
Dolce and Gabbana shape baroque figures using horsehair and wadding to create three-dimensional effects, then cover them with duchesse and mikado fabrics. These sculpted textiles reflect the same brilliance and luster as Serpotta’s stuccos.
An aesthetic of saturation—refined ornamental exuberance, where whiteness amplifies excess to a hypnotic level: a theater of the excessive that sublimates the superfluous.
Sardinian Art
Enchanted by the magic of Sardinia, Dolce and Gabbana dedicated their 2024–2025 winter collections to its prehistoric art, ancient relics, and rich folk culture. The Alta Moda collection was shown at the archaeological park of the ancient city of Nora (founded in the 8th century BC), among Roman mosaics and amphitheater ruins.
The exhibition evokes the mysterious megalithic architecture of the nuraghi in a setting that unites Alta Moda and Alta Sartoria creations. Inspired by the Sant’Efisio procession, the collections pay tribute to Sardinian weaving techniques such as pibiones (grape cluster motifs made by hand on ancient looms), and decorations referencing fauna and flora that recall the unique tradition of coccoi pintau, sculpted ceremonial bread. Puffy-sleeved, finely pleated shirts, typically worn for Sardinian ceremonies, were handmade by local women.
Spectacular corsets, cups, and belts, along with gold necklaces and earrings featuring openwork patterns adorned with sapphires, multicolored tourmalines, diamonds, peridots, and tanzanites, echo the ornaments seen in a video reportage of the Sant’Efisio procession. The jewelry’s craftsmanship is inspired by Sardinia’s ancient filigree technique, introduced by the Phoenicians and later developed by Arabs and Spaniards. Voluminous coats, overcoats, and blouses in black and white reference the mastruca, the traditional wool garment of Sardinian shepherds. This rustic coat is worn by the Mamuthonesduring the Mamoiada Carnival ritual, as shown in a video reportage. The Mamuthones’ ritual symbolizes the struggle between good and evil, between winter and summer.
Here, stone becomes a sacred stage where the island’s liturgical past fuses with living art. Traditional Sardinian garments and jewelry, uprooted from the time of processions, are reborn in a choreography of memory—between ritual gesture and mythic echo.
Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.”
— Coco Chanel
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