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“You shall have the universe: [just] leave Italy for me.” Nearly 180 years after that line was coined in Verdi’s Attila, the luxury industry feels the same way: in 2025 there will be more cruise shows in Italy than any other nation.
The season began last week in Lake Como, where Chanel showed its genteel cruise offering at the Villa d’Este (also the site of this month’s Vogue Business Global Summit). “It’s a mythical location,” Bruno Pavlovsky, the house’s fashion president, told Fashion Network’s Godfrey Deeny. Pavlovsky added: “And half of Coco Chanel’s heart was in Italy, another reason this location is perfect.”
Next up is Gucci: on 15 May, Kering Group’s flagship house will return to Florence, the city where it was founded in 1921, for its first cruise show there since 2018. The move was announced by Gucci’s former creative director, Sabato de Sarno, before his departure. It will be Gucci’s last runway presentation before his successor Demna officially begins work in July. The precise location has yet to be revealed, however, this show will be Gucci s first in Florence since it opened its archive space in the city’s Palazzo Settimanni under Alessandro Michele back in 2021.
Then on 27 May, Christian Dior will present its cruise collection, designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri, in Rome. Chiuri is herself a Roman, and Dior has collaborated with the Vatican Library on an exhibition designed to mark the Rome Jubilee this year. Like Gucci, the Paris-based house has yet to officially confirm its show location, but described its destination as: “a symbolic ode to the powerful, perpetually reinvented cultural ties that have united Italy and the house since its foundation”.
The next (and last) stop on 2025’s north-to-south Italian cruise odyssey is at the Reggia di Caserta, an hour outside Naples. Based on the palace of Versailles – yet considerably bigger than its French prototype, with multiple baroque additions and a three-kilometre-long series of fountains and ornamental lakes – this outrageously maximalist 18th century site is the chosen location for Max Mara’s 2026 cruise collection on 17 June.
Even as cruise season reaches its final destination, Italy’s summer of luxury sails on. Late June will see Venice host the wedding celebrations of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his betrothed, Lauren Sánchez. Although in no way an institutional luxury industry activation, an event at which it is anticipated many of the world’s most high-net-worth individuals will gather to party over three days will inevitably be luxury-adjacent.
According to a report in the Guardian, Bezos and Sánchez’s choice of Italy, and specifically Venice, for their big day was in part thanks to Dolce Gabbana co-founder Domenico Dolce. Back in Rome between 12-16 July, the house will present five days of shows, presentations and parties as part of its Alta Moda couture project. Locations will include the Forum, Hadrian’s Villa and the Castel Sant’Angelo. At the announcement of these venues last week, Rome’s councillor for major events, Alessandro Onorato, noted that the city has recorded around 10,000 hotel nights booked by Dolce Gabbana guests and employees over the Alta Moda period.
Why, this cruise season and elsewhere, is luxury fashion so keen to be displayed in Italy? There are some prosaically logistical answers. For the Italian houses especially (even French-owned Gucci), Italy is an economically convenient choice. And naturally the Italian houses have a culturally genetic affinity with venues in their home country.
Another reason relates to Made In Italy. It’s a smart time for luxury to reinforce its ties to the country’s craftsmanship, amidst a TikTok campaign that proclaims luxury goods are by and large made in China in the wake of US tariffs. Any truths to that aside, most truly apex luxury houses manufacture an overwhelming amount of their product here.
Last year, a report prepared by consultancy firm The European House – Ambrosetti for Kering Group found that in 2022 the French luxury conglomerate generated over €10 billion worth of exports from Italy, around 1.7 per cent of the country’s total. The group has separately said that just under 88 per cent of its supply chain across all brands is in Italy. Chanel, meanwhile, chose Como this year partly to highlight its purchase in April of a 35 per cent stake in the historical silk company Mantero, which is based nearby. Joining the dots between manufacture and marketing through the truthful highlighting of craft and provenance can only serve to counter contemporary scepticism about the value of luxury goods.
Perhaps the strongest reason of all for showing in Italy, however, is Italy itself. As well as the shows (and wedding) mentioned, this year has also seen Pucci show its spring collection in Portofino. Bulgari has an upcoming high jewellery event in Italy, while several other houses and retailers are hosting private events over the coming months in locations including Capri, Venice and Taormina. Persuading HNWI clients to visit any of these sites is not a hard ask.
The fact that Bezos and Sánchez have chosen Venice for their wedding is just the latest example of a global fascination with Italy that goes back to the Grand Tour tradition established in the 18th century. Italy’s cultural history of the Roman empire, Magna Graecia, Catholicism and the Renaissance – combined with the weather, the food, the design and La Dolce Vita – is woven within the country s deep kinship with craft, quality, and taste. As Roberto Gualtieri, the Mayor of Rome, added at the Alta Moda announcement last week: “Beauty lives here. It is a place with an extraordinary layering of beauty and meaning.”
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