Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda collections are renowned for their lavish locations, offering an experience filled with parties, celebrity mingling, and exclusive shopping. This year, they took their multi-day event to the Italian island of Sardinia.

Instead of drawing inspiration from other cultures, this season Dolce & Gabbana stayed close to home, focusing on Sardinia’s history and traditions. The island’s past is riddled with colonization by Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Saracens, and the Spanish Aragonese. The influx of cultures provides a mosaic of symbols and mythologies rooted in paganism. 

The new collection prominently featured Sardinia’s illustrious indigenous crafts. Dolce & Gabbana reinterpreted techniques such as filigree, coarse-wool carpet weaving, shirtmaking, and skirt-pleating. 

The collection began with black designs with hints of the Sardinan influence to come. One of the opening all-black looks included a corset with a flower-embellished long sleeve top and broad fringed pants. 

As the show progressed, gold elements began to shine through, evoking the sense of Roman armor with golden filigree and embroidery. 

The designers paid tribute to Sardinian carpet weaving and honored the island’s artisanal skills with puff-sleeved shirts handcrafted by local women using a ceremonial fine-pleating technique.

Dolce & Gabbana’s collection also took inspiration from the couture work of Maison Carosa, which was founded in the late 1940s by Roman princess Giovanna Caracciolo Ginetti. This inspiration can be seen later in the collection with the exaggerated shoulders and cinched waists.