“We’re looking at New York with Italian eyes,” said Dolce & Gabbana’s Domenico Dolce at a preview of the company’s Spring 2018 Alta Sartoria collection early Saturday morning. What would follow about 12 hours later at Rockefeller Center (where, just a few floors away, Cardi B was getting ready to perform on Saturday Night Live—and finally confirm her pregnancy), was the middle wedge of Dolce & Gabbana’s takeover of Gotham this weekend; on Friday, the house unveiled its latest highest-end jewelry at the New York Public Library, and on Sunday evening, it reveals Alta Moda, its uppermost womenswear component. Of Sartoria, the duo said it was not difficult to show this far away from their Milanese headquarters—they compared getting everything and everyone here to getting the whole operation to Naples (the Italian, not Floridian, city). When you have their reach, dollars, and fandom, that claim makes obtuse sense. Dolce, and brand partner Stefano Gabbana, count excellent marketing skills among their many talents, and their Alta Sartoria presentation (clocking in at 103 looks, all walked out to the crooning of the legendary Liza Minnelli) was primarily crafted to woo VIP clients—the international ultra-spenders who alighted at Rockefeller Center’s gloriously worn-in Rainbow Room decked to the nines in their Dolce sequins and their Gabbana florals. The couturiers know that the added spectacle of an intimate salon is the hook-line-and-sinker icing on the moneymaking cake.