A private visit to the Basilica of San Marco, lunch at Cipriani, dinner in an intimate, private palace spilling over with Murano glass, where the ceilings are embellished with a multitude of cherubs… But the must remains dinner at the Misericordia, an old friary from the sixteenth century, where the collection is presented on the ground floor, followed by a magisterial dinner on the first floor. More than one hundred guests are seated amidst near-theatrical decor: Venetian objects placed here and there, frames and giant paintings, gondolas, ropes, sculptures swaddled in red sheets. You feel like you’re in the attic of a doge– happily the orchestra is on hand to bring us out of our reverie. Some will even feel moved to try a waltz! They definitely know what they’re doing at Chanel: make the journalists waltz in a Venetian Renaissance monument on rivers of diamonds!
Text and photos by Olivia da Costa.