Fashion / STYLEI
t all started with a phone call from Corinne Ng,
managing director of Edipresse Media Singapore,
which publishes Singapore Tatler, amid deadline
week in May. She wasn’t her usual perky self
and sounded somewhat cautious. “Remember
Dolce & Gabbana’s The Great Show in Shanghai
last year?” she asked. “Well, you’re invited for its
Alta Moda presentation in Sicily in July. Would you
be interested to go?”
I was momentarily caught off guard. To be honest, I still
hadn’t quite processed that incident in Shanghai, when
Stefano Gabbana, one half of the designer duo, had a terse
exchange on Instagram with model Michele Tranovo,
who had pointed out that one of the brand’s ads as
being potentially racist. It quickly escalated from social
media to real life and drew ire from Chinese netizens,
resulting in the cancellation of the Shanghai show by the
local government. And having been invited as a guest of
the brand, I was left stranded backstage with plenty of
questions and no answers.
But before I made up my mind whether to accept
this latest invitation, I had to make some calls. I wanted
to find out how members of the press across the region
were taking to this matter, especially given the backdrop
of controversy. Most were on the fence, while a few
others had rather strong opinions against the label. All
the while I was thinking: how do we continue to avoidone of the most extravagant Italian labels when it is still
making steady waves commercially, with 4.9 per cent
growth in its overall revenues as of March 2019?
Furthermore, there has been much talk about the
brand wanting to make a comeback in Asia, and when this
happens, I want to be at the heart of the action. So it didn’t
make sense to sit out this experience. I had to find out for
myself what people on the ground thought.SICILIAN ODYSSEY
It was a scorching Saturday in Sicily—40°C to be exact—
and the European journalists, especially the Italians,
were literally soaking up the sun seemingly enjoying
the heatwave. The Asian press, on the other hand, were
mostly hovering around under trees for fear of getting
sunburnt. My lunch table consisted of fashion journalists
from Hong Kong, Bangkok and Shanghai. Conversations
were polite and everyone seemed to be taking the
sit-back-and-observe approach. Not content with being
a mere spectator, I scanned the space looking for some
Asian VICs (Very Important Customers) I could speak to.
After lunch and a quick change of outfits, we were on
our way to the Alta Moda show venue: the Valle dei Templi
in the city of Agrigento, which is one of Sicily’s most
impressive and best-preserved Greater Greek architectural
sites of all time. The stifling heat didn’t stop the guests
from arriving in their Dolce & Gabbana finery. As weTaking inspiration from Athena, the Goddess of War, models looked invincible wearing
high jewellery with handcrafted headdresses and armoursingapore tatler. october 2019 91