Dua Lipa arrived at the opening night of La Traviata at Milan's Teatro alla Scala on Saturday, September 19, in an Ashi Studio couture gown that was on the Paris runway just over two months earlier. The black, semi-sheer dress comes from the Saudi label's Fall 2026 haute couture collection, where it was shown as Look 13. It was the right kind of dress for one of opera's most closely watched evenings.
The Ashi Studio gown is close-fitting, with a high neckline, short cap sleeves and a slight train. Its sheer organza base is covered in dense black embellishment. The detail that defines it sits on one shoulder, where feathers, organza and twisting, vine-like forms gather in an asymmetrical cluster. Some fashion outlets compared it to a thorn bush.
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The back is fully laced up, with a black tie running almost the full length of the dress, so the sedate front gives way to something more revealing from behind. Lipa's slicked-back, spiky updo echoed the shoulder piece, and she kept the rest of the look dark, with heavy black eye makeup, a black Ferragamo Gancini mini clutch with gold hardware, and several silver earrings. Her stylist is Lorenzo Posocco.
The gown's origin explains why it suits the setting. Ashi Studio showed the collection, titled "A Different Skin," at Paris Haute Couture Week in July to mark the house's 20th anniversary. Mohammed Ashi drew on famous costume balls, including Carlos de Beistegui's 1951 masquerade in Venice and the 1972 Rothschild Surrealist Ball, along with Dalí-era surrealism. He described the approach as "a warped kind of historicism," borrowing from another century without being bound by it. Masks, feathers, corsetry and sculpted shapes run through the collection, and the Lipa look brings several of them together in one black gown.
GORGE: Dua Lipa in ✨️Ashi Studio✨️ Fall/Winter 2026 Couture at La Scala.🪡 pic.twitter.com/fNUfzap2Fb
— La Mode Unknown (@LaModeUnknown) September 21, 2026
The evening also had a personal thread for Lipa. She told Vogue Italia in an earlier interview that La Scala was a theatre she had never visited and was eager to see, and that she hoped to catch La Traviata during its September run. Its opening night was the first date of a run that continues through October 15. The production revives Liliana Cavani's staging, first created in 1990, with Nadine Sierra as Violetta. La Scala has a long history with the opera, including the 1955 Visconti production starring Maria Callas.
That history is why the choice of dress works. Opera dressing tends to default to volume and sparkle, and Lipa's gown did neither. The drama comes from texture, transparency and the shoulder embellishment, and the black palette keeps a piece with this much surface detail from tipping into costume. It also gives the collection a second public showing, this time in the setting that gothic, masquerade-inflected couture suits best.
Lipa shared photographs from the night on Instagram, including a shot of her posing against the red-velvet balcony rail before the performance. For Ashi Studio, the appearance places a fresh-off-the-runway couture piece in front of a very large audience just as the season's press coverage is winding down.
