Isabella Rossellini Used Fashion to Pay Tribute to David Lynch and Her Mother at the 2025 Oscars
When David Lynch died in January, Isabella Rossellini paid tribute to him on Instagram, writing, “I loved him so much.” Today, at the 2025 Oscars, she used fashion to celebrate the director.
While she’s nominated for best supporting actress for her role as Sister Agnes in Conclave, Rossellini is looking back to the start of her career: her breakthrough role in Lynch’s 1986 film, Blue Velvet. (While Rossellini also starred in Lynch’s 1990 film, Wild at Heart, their relationship reached beyond the professional: They dated for five years, between 1987 and 1991.) So it was only fitting that Dolce Gabbana help Rossellini honor the director in a blue velvet dress.
“I made a film in 1986 with David Lynch called Blue Velvet and I wore a blue velvet robe; it was a Bobby Vinton song,” Rossellini tells Vogue. “We had the idea with Stefano Gabbana and [Domenico] Dolce for the dress. Their clothes always tells stories–their references to the Catholic church, Italian Cinema. Even sometimes vegetable like basil–like Italian cuisine. They like to tell stories. When we discussed the outfit for the Oscars, David had just passed away, we decided we were going to honor him with the dress. A Blue Velvet dress!”
The tribute wasn’t limited to fashion—Rossellini walked the carpet with Laura Dern, a fellow Lynch muse and her co-star in Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart. Dern, who is filming a movie in New York, flew in the night before the Oscars and left on the red-eye flight following the ceremony in order to make her 7 a.m. call time Monday morning. “Laura and I became very good friends during Blue Velvet and we were both very close to David. So I ask Laura to be my plus-one and she was delighted,” Rossellini says. “I am very grateful to her.” Dern adds, “It was an honor to be the date of a legend, my gorgeous brilliant friend, Isabella to the Academy Awards on behalf of her nomination. I know we both feel privileged to sit side by side in tribute to our beloved David Lynch and all he has given art, cinema, and humanity.”
The blue velvet Dolce Gabbana dress isn’t the only sartorial nod Rossellini made with her Oscars look. Along with her Bvlgari high jewelry, she wears earrings that father, Roberto Rossellini, bought for her mother, Ingrid Bergman. “I wanted to be dressed by all Italian designers because I am Italian! Also my father loved Bvlgari as they were in Rome. And when he could afford it, he would buy the jewelry for my mother,” Rossellini says. “They lent me exquisite jewelry but I added the earrings that my father bought my mother. She wore them in the film Trip to Italy in 1954 and Mama wore them often at the Oscars when she won for Murder on The Orient Express–her third Oscar in the same category I was nominated in!”
It has been an especially emotional awards season for the actor. The day she was nominated for the Academy Award, she wrote on Instagram: “When I was young, I was always identified as the daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini. As I’ve gotten older, this doesn’t happen as frequently and I miss it especially today. I wish my parents were alive to celebrate with me this great honor. And also today with this joy in my mind can’t help lingering in the beyond to David Lynch.”
