The collection itself — titled The Inner Venus — was presented on the illuminated staircase overlooking the Arena, and it was unlike anything on a conventional runway. Each look had been resin-coated, frozen mid-gesture, as if turned to stone. “We studied all the installations as if they were contemporary relics,” Di Morabito explained. The animating concept was the fragment — not Canova’s flawless marble perfection, but the broken torso, the mutilated form, the piece that carries more emotion precisely because it is incomplete.

The material work was among the most intricate of his career. Silk tubular elements were entirely hand-stitched and interlaced to create anatomical surfaces. Gauze lace was embroidered with pearls and wool spheres for density and texture. Stabilised real hydrangeas were embedded directly into trousers. Feathered collars hovered between protection and decoration. Leather orchids rested on peplum skirts. A full gold look appeared for the first time in the brand’s history — metal as complete garment rather than accessory. “These techniques are all new,” Di Morabito said. “It’s an exercise in pushing the boundaries.”

The tension that has always defined his work — masculine rigour against hyper-feminine construction — remained central. Severely cut tailored blazers appeared alongside organza dresses threaded with suspended floral stems. A leather treatment that mimicked the aged texture of denim marked another first for the house.

A decade on from that gypsotheque debut, the obsession is unchanged: the body as sculpture, as memory, as fragment. What has changed is the scale of the ambition and the confidence with which it is executed.