Photo: Arnold Jerocki/Getty Images
Risso and Sossah emphasized the importance of movement and the need for it to follow Keys’s body throughout the performance. “You have to think about how it catches the light, about what happens to a train as it sweeps across the stage. We knew Alicia would close Vogue World with a performance, so the look had to have presence and emotion, but also movement,” Risso said of the collaboration with the artist. “We wanted to create something that felt solemn without becoming too formal or stiff. We felt it was essential to create something that would allow Alicia to fully inhabit it. For me, dressing someone for a performance never means imposing a character on them; the clothes must become part of their own language.”
Both delicate and monumental, the dress also embodies Risso’s concept of Italian craftsmanship—the central theme of Vogue World 2026: Milan. “For me, Italian craftsmanship isn’t just about perfection—it’s also about the hand,” the designer said. “That is, understanding the material so deeply that you can manipulate it, transform it, and allow ‘accidents’ to happen.”
Photo: Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images
The look itself is a slip dress assembled from different elements that extends into an enormous train that was then painted by Flaminia Veronesi, who decorated the entire surface entirely by hand as if it were a canvas. “We exaggerated the train until it reached the same length as the dress,” said Risso. “There’s something almost contradictory about this: softness and structure, masculine and feminine, something unfinished set against something solemn. It’s a work that speaks of accumulation, transformation, and memory.”
Keys rarely wears dresses—her approach to style is much more casual. Still, Risso’s work resonated deeply with her, in part due to his own freewheeling approach to a formal gown. “We’re interested in the unexpected outcomes that can arise when different objects, garments, materials, and people come into contact with one another,” he says. “The dress is part of our ‘Vestige’ language, in which one-of-a-kind pieces are created through composite parts. What’s new, perhaps, is the context: taking that handmade, intimate process and letting it become something enormous through Alicia and her performance.”
