“A movie-night selection made by Dolce’s boyfriend, a gracious Brazilian advertising executive named Guilherme Siqueira, had provided the inspiration for this season’s Alta Moda collection: the 1999 version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” directed by Michael Hoffman and starring Michelle Pfeiffer, which was filmed in Italy. Dolce explained, ‘When you see this movie, you go, “This is like a dream in Portofino.”‘

“He and Gabbana had been struck by the film’s vision of an Italian countryside populated with characters drawn from ancient Greek myth: Theseus, the mythological founder of Athens, and his betrothed, Hippolyta, the Amazonian queen. The forthcoming fashion show, Dolce said, was an attempt to imagine the result of a triple collaboration: ‘Homer, the visionary; Dante, the poet of Purgatory and Paradise, with Beatrice, la bellezza; and Shakespeare, with the crazy humor.'” — Rebecca Mead, “The Couture Club,” The New Yorker