How Erling Haaland’s Summer Is Going

It wasn’t the prettiest of Premier League seasons for Norwegian striker Erling Braut Haaland, although thanks to a tranche of league wins, he and a couple of teammates managed to claw Manchester City’s way back up into third place. They were runners-up in the Football Association Cup, but, Stateside in the last weeks, they were unceremoniously booted from the Club World Cup in the Round of Sixteen. Them’s the breaks for the gentlemen from City: It’s not every year that you can pull off a “treble” win of the League, the Football Association cup, and the Euros.

Holding to his summer form — and dutifully fulfilling his ambassadorial $2-million Dolce and Gabbana contract, inked in 2023 — Haaland made his way south to the Med, stopping off for a bit of a swim off a boat in June with his fetching steady, Isabel Haugseng Johansen, pictured above on her boy’s arm on their way to, what else, a Dolce and Gabbana show on July 14 in the Rome Forum, of all cool places. The gentlemen designers Dolce and Gabbana certainly do not stint on locations.

On this particular peacock strut, Haaland’s white suit can be said to have been a Biarritz-to-Venice summer staple, especially for a Grand Tour boulevardier from Europe’s extreme north, since the Belle Epoque, as we know from Mann’s Death In Venice. It broadcasts a cock-of-the-walk, of course, but one of discernment and a certain headlong wisdom. The style arguably saw its finest decade in Europe in the disco-a-go-go 1960s in Cannes, in Monte Carlo, and most famously in Italy, in 1960, as Federico Fellini had his eloquent male lead, Marcello Mastroianni, put in a rakish white suit signifying his real downward spiral in the last scene of La Dolce Vita, pictured below on the beach.

Dolce and Gabbana would be only too aware of Fellini’s landmark white-suit scene, kitting out their $2-million man in something approaching that kit, and their aim would be for it — the suit and their imposing ambassador — to stand out in their fashion-show front row and at their afterparty, both of which were, at the moment of this fine red-carpet snap, in the immediate future.

As ever, the question for the suit is, how’s the man carrying it, and how’s it carrying the man?

At first blush, the jacket could even be said to fit the chesty six-foot-four (and three-quarters), 194-pound striker. The prodigious Norse lung cage on this ambassador being the giant barrel that it is, he can only be made to fit a two-button, not a three, which gives that long V punctuated by the top button well below his sternum. Certainly the sleeves and shoulders seem to have been well cut. And that’s where the positive report ends.

Lower down on the body, the suit starts to fall apart. Stopping us at mid-body are the (flapped) pockets. The extreme height of the pocket flaps — actually north of jacket’s top button — unfortunately makes it seem as if, late one night in the atelier, and possibly in a rush to get this thing ready, one of the tailors had a thought about the pattern that ran something like this: “There’s been a mistake, no man’s body can be this long! I’m cutting the damn pockets in where they ought to be!”

As a result of that line of thinking, by any reasonable global positioning system app, there are approximately 6,754 nautical miles between the pocket and the lower hem of this jacket. Put more accurately, the people lost Haaland’s waist. Haaland’s pockets have been cut into the jacket literally at the man’s elbows. Elbow-height on Erling Braut Haaland is way the heck up off the ground for a pocket to attempt a normal life.

For contrast, in the last scene of La Dolce Vita, we need only compare Mastroianni’s besom pocket slash below the second button on his elegantly cut two-button. The pockets ride on Mastroianni’s hips, where they should be, below his waist.

A word about perforated lounge-lizard loafers as a summer look. The shoe is an Italo-French peacock specialty, and there’s a very simple reason for that: For something like a century, the sheer number of sockless second sons and disgraced aristocrats who have flooded the Mediterranean’s northern littoral from the Costa del Sol to the Aegean simply demanded low-slung, informal footwear, and, ever hospitable, the France and Italy’s excellent shoemakers complied. The go-go 1960s down on the Med and in Las Vegas sealed the deal for them as standard operating kit.

On July 15, for the Dolce and Gabbana “Alta Sartoria” (literally, “high tailoring,” aka couture) show, the fetching couple pulled out the stops and went whole hog for silver, as pictured above. While his better half works her way through several well-known hurdles presented by naked dressing, beginning with the underwear, the clearly delighted Manchester City striker has opted for a jacket-free grey turtleneck and beltless pants ensemble, reminiscent of the costume worn by David McCallum as “Illya Kuryakin,” the dashing Russian-expat sidekick to Robert Vaughn’s “Napoleon Solo” in “The Man From U.N.C.L.E,” pictured below. Though Haaland’s turtle is not ribbed, it can be that his is the exact same shade of grey-silver as McCallum’s was.

One problem deserves study: The necklace, better pictured below. At this distance, it’s impossible to say what it actually is, but in form we can fairly judge that it’s (a sort of) bead choker, rather than the full-on Rev. Al Sharpton pendant necklace. So, choker on a turtleneck? Grandmotherly as that might seem, and it is dang grandmotherly, it has been done, so the difficulty is not one of gender. Question is whether the accent means something to the man — for instance, did he personally acquire it in the Chyulu Hills from a Masai warrior — or was it “styled.” Jury’s out on that, but unfortunately, it reeks of artifice.

Moving right along from the latter-day Illya Kuryakin, Conde Nast global content director Anna Wintour, pictured below, has gathered no moss since the Wimbledon final a few days ago. In Rome, she layers extravagantly with a grand floral coat over a floaty cream dress and buttresses all that with some a racy pair of open-toed stiletti. That’s confidence at work.

Not to be outdone, longtime Dolce and Gabbana model Lady Kitty Spencer Lewis, Diana’s neice and William’s and Harry’s first cousin, pictured below, flies the Dolce and Gabanna flag in a corseted black number on the arm of Ali Samli, who is half, with his partner Goran Svilar, of London’s luxury concierge service, S2. Samli is fearlessly taking the whole gilt-bedroom slipper-as-outdoor-wear thing to the max. Possibly, that is a Dolce and Gabbana shirt. Here, effervescently out for a fun evening in Rome, Lady Kitty is definitely in on the joke.

Finally, some actual half-Italian/half-Swedish cinematic royalty in the form of Isabella Rossellini, regal in a sheer opera cape and a pair of sensible heels en route into the Alta Moda show at the Roman Forum. Everything about her is working well; she’s a picture of a woman at home with herself and in her world.

Looking slightly less at home outside the July 15 Alta Sartoria show at the Castel Sant’Angelo is Fefè, who is identified as “the Dolce and Gabbana dog.” More specifically, Fefè is is a miniature poodle first adopted by Gabbana, who then discovered that the canine did not get along with his cat. Fefè was then transferred to Dolce, who, last year, upon launching the eponymous “Fefè” $100 per-bottle Dolce and Gabbana dog perfume, explained that the dog’s name was short for Raffaele.

Below, the Global Creative Advisor for Conde Nast and the Editorial Advisor for British Vogue Edward Enninful shows how it’s done in dark green linen in midsummer in Rome. Enough said.

In a word, the two Dolce and Gabbana shows pulled the cool grown-ups. Bottom line, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Rossellini, Enninful and Wintour, it’s just possible that, if he keeps his eyes and ears open, the preternaturally athletically gifted Man City striker will learn a thing or two. And not just about his off-duty, civilian kit.