Dolce & Gabbana Show Off Their New Alta Gioielleria Collection in Sardinia—“Italy Is in These Pieces”

It’s dusk on the southern coast of Sardinia and around 400 people have gathered for dinner on the terrace. Every now and then the candlelight catches a bright spark thrown from jewels as guests table-hop to greet each other. Christina Aguilera is about to perform and in front of us the sea is glowing with lights twinkling on a clutch of mega yachts anchored off shore.

This is a party to launch Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda. The group of well heeled, couture clad guests have arrived a day early to view the Alta Gioielleria, an increasingly important part of the four-day extravaganza. July is a big month for new high jewelry collections across Europe—luxury houses have hosted client-facing events in Florence, Vienna, and Monaco, for starters—so these customers don’t lack invites to glamorous launches. What is it about Dolce & Gabbana jewels that entices them?

“At first it was the clothes that drew me in,” one American guest tells me the next morning, dressed in a green crochet caftan for the beach teamed with a magnificent pair of golden micro mosaic earrings. “Then I fell in love with the one-of-a-kind jewels because they are so different from any other jewelry. It’s the hand craft element. Maybe it’s their Italian-ness that I love.”

For these seasoned jewelry buyers, diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires can be commonplace; they require more. And within Alta Gioielleria lies the culture, folklore, and artistic traditions of particular regions of Italy told through finely crafted gold and gemstones.

“I have to say, I recognize Italy in these pieces,” says Naomi Campbell who’s flown in to join the show. “From hints of baroque architecture and renaissance paintings to the vibrant sun-drenched colors of the Mediterranean. When I wear one of their creations, I feel like I’m carrying a piece of Italy with me.”

This year the tropes, symbolism, characters, and history of Sardinia shine from a collection of 90 new jewels, a treasury of woven gold comprising layers of ‘embroidered’ filigree, hammered shiny chains, vast fringed collars, and Papal-style crosses. A 2,000-year-old legend states that Sardinian witch-fairies known as janas began the tradition of filigree twisting small wires of gold into lace-like patterns, used here in complex decorative ‘baskets’ to house egg-sized stones. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s love of color is expressed by vast gems, many sized between 50 and 100-carats, in Brazilian quartz, green beryl, kunzite, rubellite, and amethyst, echoing shades of Sardinian sunsets and shallow blue waters gently lapping on pink sand. Ornate golden ‘buttons’ mimic the Sardinian tradition of hanging buttons from wrists and costumes as symbols of prosperity that are passed down as family memories. Here they are featured in round and teardrop shapes suspended on chains with ancient pieces of Sciacca coral, cameos, a gem set bear, and an octopus.

“This is art” sighs a pharma entrepreneur originally from Bucharest at the launch while deciding which piece to add to her collection, “the craftsmanship is extraordinary.” Indeed, one young female artisan in the Dolce & Gabbana Milan workshop has spent many hours hand-crafting 300 or so small decorative leaves by drawing variegated veins and life-like elements onto the gold before cutting and polishing. It’s these time consuming intricate details secreted within big and dramatic pieces that surprise and mesmerize.

No one here wants to flaunt a check around their neck in the form of a big rock, rather they are looking for an artistic experience aware of the design and craftsmanship. Also they’re anxious to be first because a slow response means risking a piece will be snapped up by someone else—and there’s only one of each design. The successful client will often debut the piece the following night at the Alta Moda show rubbing salt into someone else’s missed opportunity wound.

One art curator and philanthropist, who runs a foundation and Contemporary Art Museum close to Sacramento, is choosing a necklace and pair of earrings. Her collection will become a legacy left to the Fashion and Textile College run alongside the museum for students to study how they are made and their relation to art and fashion.

Back to dinner where a Texan guest is wearing a huge gem-studded necklace spelling Sicilia. “You see the jewelry has a soul,” he tells me, “which is difficult to interpret but what I mean is when I look at a Dolce jewels is you can tell there is a history—it’s almost like

you can see there’s something behind the pieces. No other brand can do that.” Perhaps at the end of the day the difference about these jewels is passion. Everyone has come to try and capture a precious slice of the designers’ joyful obsession.