Bianca BaltiLorenzo Baroncelli
Less than 24 hours after Vogue World 2026: Milano transformed the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II into a runway, fashion and political leaders reconvened across Piazza del Duomo at Palazzo Reale for the annual Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana gala dinner ushering in the start of Milan Fashion Week.
Organized by the CNMI with the support of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Italian Trade Agency, and in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan, the elegant evening also celebrated the opening of the Dalí and Fashion exhibit, whose fashion component was overseen by Vogue World show curator, Judith Clark.
Mayor Giuseppe Sala welcomed guests including Anna Wintour and Vogue Italia’s Francesca Ragazzi; the chief executives of nearly every major Italian fashion house; designers Brunello Cucinelli, Gianvito Rossi, Alessandro Sartori, and JJ Martin; and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
With Prime Minister Meloni in the room—the first time a sitting president has attended Milan Fashion Week in a decade—the evening’s programming proceeded at a decidedly un-fashion-week pace. Dinner, overseen by the three-Michelin-starred restaurant Da Vittorio, was underway less than 15 minutes after the 8:30 p.m. start time. “We greatly appreciate Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s support for Milan Fashion Week and ‘Made in Italy,’ and her presence at the opening ceremony demonstrates the attention that institutions are paying to a strategic industry for our country,” Carlo Capasa, chairman of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, said, noting that fashion accounts for around 5% of Italy’s GDP and employs around one million people in the nation.
An eggplant terrine antipasto was followed by Da Vittorio’s signature Paccheri alla Vittorio, large pasta tubes in a creamy tomato sauce, with Franciacorta brut cuvée and extra brut cuvée pairings. After dinner, guests lingered to mingle over passed dessert: Il lievitato di stagione, a panettone-style cake, and cannoncini pastries, which were piped with sweet cream as they were served. Then came something of a night at the museum: ahead of the Dalí and Fashion’s public opening on Thursday, attendees made their way up Palazzo Reale’s grand staircase for a private preview of the exhibition. The curation traces Salvador Dalí’s pioneering experiments at the intersection of art and fashion, including designing ballet costumes with Gabrielle Chanel, dressing guests for the Ball of the Century with Christian Dior, staging fashion happenings with Paco Rabanne, and creating an extensive body of work for Vogue. “Vogue World celebrated human imagination, and then, the very next day, across the street, you see an exhibition celebrating the creativity of an artist,” Ragazzi told Vogue. “I think that link is very powerful.”
Dalí saw his work in fashion as an extension of his art, and became a regular contributor to Vogue beginning in the mid 1930s, when the magazine commissioned him to illustrate a red chiffon evening gown. He conceived the image as a photo-painting, placing the model in one of his stark Surrealist landscapes. His first Vogue cover followed in 1939, featuring a woman whose head dissolves into flowers, with two subsequent covers in 1944 and 1946, alongside fashion illustrations.
Around this formative time, Dalí began his most prolific fashion collaboration with Elsa Schiaparelli, translating imagery from his works into clothes, accessories, beauty packaging, and advertisements. The Drawer-Suit, inspired by his Venus de Milo with Drawers sculpture, was photographed by Cecil Beaton for Vogue in 1936; a year later, Beaton shot a portfolio of Wallis Simpson highlighting their Lobster Dress, its red crustacean sprawled across the skirt, in what became one of fashion’s most enduring encounters with Surrealism.
