Celebrity Fashion Matchmaker Lucio Di Rosa Opens Showroom in New York

MILAN — Waiting has never been Lucio Di Rosa’s forte.

The celebrity fashion matchmaker decided to go solo in 2023 after two decades of working at Italian fashion houses. In that time he has launched his strategic branding agency LDR22 in Los Angeles, and followed up that successful debut by cutting the ribbon of an outpost housed in Milan’s storied Palazzo Meli Lupi di Soragna just five months later. Now he’s expanding his boutique showroom concept to New York, opening a 2,152-square-foot unit at 525 Seventh Avenue.

In between, he helped pair brands with celebrities and VIPs, with labels he represented popping up on the likes of Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Sharon Stone, Sydney Sweeney, Jenna Ortega and Shakira, as well as Adrien Brody, Matt Bomer and Theo James, to name a few. 

Services expanded, too, now including international press office corporate consultancy and editorial capabilities; event planning; market analysis; brand identity development; talent scouting; content and campaign production as well as celebrity and influencer activations. The client list for celebrity placements in L.A. includes the likes of Tod’s, Antonio Marras, Gianvito Rossi and Georges Hobeika, while brands such as Gabriele Colangelo, Forte_Forte, Autry and Patrizia Pepe are among the ones leveraging LDR22’s at-large services and presence both in the U.S. and Italy.

“One of the people in my team in L.A. always tells me to calm down,” Di Rosa told WWD, tuning in on Zoom at sunrise from New York, already busy overseeing the final touches to the new showroom, from setting up big mirrors to fixing carpet snafus.

He pointed to his company’s improved, current structure as the real enabler of the New York opening, whose origins trace back to six months ago.

“It was an idea recurrently knocking at my door, but I was pushing it away,” said Di Rosa about LDR22’s third outpost. “We started [this business] so rapidly and clients are demanding more and more from us. It’s a constant query of requests, especially for what concerns the U.S.”

If offering a full service to a handful of his existing clients was still manageable, when the likes of Kiton and brands under the Oniverse group such as Calzedonia, Intimissimi and Falconeri reached out to Di Rosa to implement activities in the U.S., he started to realize there was a gap in the market. 

“There are brands who prefer to have just one vendor — a single company handling everything across countries… so opening in New York was key and strategic in that sense. It’s about closing the circle,” said Di Rosa, underscoring he has “no intention to add other cities like Paris, London or Dubai next.”

He claimed his company’s agility, speed and rigor in execution are among the assets that set it apart, but his affable manner, relationships with celebrities and network of contacts certainly play a role, too.

All these skills seem to have been forged by a woman Di Rosa repeatedly mentioned throughout the conversation: Donatella Versace. 

“I will be forever grateful to her, because she trusted me since Day One,” he said about his 14 years spent working at Versace, mainly as the head of celebrities, VIPs and haute couture clients worldwide relations. Di Rosa joined Versace after a stint at Giorgio Armani from 2002 to 2005 and stayed until 2019, before moving to Dolce & Gabbana as its head of worldwide celebrities and VIP relations.

He recalled how he passed Versace’s first test by fire, as he dressed Hilary Swank, Jessica Alba, Uma Thurman and Salma Hayek, among others, in Versace at his first Oscars ceremony. To this day, he underscored he has never paid an actor and commits to organic product placements only.

“Her imprinting will always stay with me; I apply it to many situations and aspects of my business,” said Di Rosa of Donatella. “She wanted things done for yesterday, so that’s where the speed of execution comes from, for one.”

He helped the brand in other ways as well. For example, when tasked with boosting the Atelier Versace business in 2016, he understood the key lay in perfecting the customer experience.

“Those high-spending clients from the Middle East, for example, were not treated as they expected,” recalled Di Rosa. A revamp of the showroom in Versace’s landmark Via Gesù headquarters included Di Rosa taking the designer’s own white sofa from her home and bringing it to the space. Using the brand’s home categories like glasses and cups to serve Champagne or coffee to clients and overall tweaks to the selling process to make it more hospitable helped.

“They started not only to buy the clothes — which in most cases they didn’t even see but purchased via sketches — but also the plates or porcelain sets for weddings,” said Di Rosa.

Those learnings stuck with him, as he set up the LDR22 locations with the same approach. Each outpost is conceived with a luxury hospitality experience in mind and as an extension of Di Rosa’s own home, with design pieces and plenty of home objects punctuating the spaces. These are led by the use of Fornasetti elements — from the Nuvole wallpaper to cushions, vases, trays and cups — and Dr. Vranjes’ “Rosso Nobile” fragrance.

Each location reflects the spirit of the city. While the L.A. one is conceived as a 4,000-square-foot villa furnished with pieces from Minotti, Flos and Artemide and replete with a swimming pool and garden, the Milan unit has a frescoed ceiling, wood flooring and private courtyards, and the New York space has a straightforward, urban approach.

“The idea is to offer an experience that is different from the corporate world, and make this business more pleasurable. A person stepping in the showroom should never feel like they are in an office,” said Di Rosa.

“Most showrooms don’t work like this,” he continued, pointing to board rooms he finds “horrible” and display of racks full of clothes as examples. Di Rosa prefers to keep a curated selection of samples, instead reserving separate areas for the full storage of products and shipments activities. 

“I try to cover every product category. We were missing menswear for a long time, but now we have Kiton, which has so much untapped potential,” said Di Rosa. Ditto for Falconeri, which he is enjoying to reboot and elevate in perception, also thanks to placements on the likes of Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Glen Powell, as well as the latest campaign he worked on for the cashmere brand and that saw real-life couple Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Jason Statham fronting the images.

Other projects he’s proud of range from the placements for Tod’s, which was his solo venture’s first client; the rebranding of Emé and its pivoting from pure bridal player to occasion wear, and the retooling of Patrizia Pepe, seen thanks to Di Rosa on the likes of Jessica Alba, Zoe Saldaña, Elizabeth Olsen and Joey King.

While he acknowledged that influencers still resonate for some categories such as mass market products, Di Rosa believes luxury brands are shifting their focus back to celebrities, “who will always have their own validation, high positioning and stellar engagement.”

Still, he recognized the stagnating momentum fashion is experiencing. Hence, he’s looking to expand his portfolio to other industries, including interiors, as well as food and beverage and hospitality. He already has secured Campari for a project during the Cannes Film Festival, teased Di Rosa.

Meanwhile, he intends to keep his venture self-financed, although he revealed he has been approached by potential investors in the U.S. “But at this stage I’m not interested. If you open the doors to investors, there’s the risk that the magic of having a curation of clients or only few garments hanging from the racks might end,” said Di Rosa, cherishing the freedom and lack of pressure going solo allow him. 

“We’re still in a growing trajectory and I want to enjoy it. Even when there are challenges and missteps, it’s all part of the learning curve — and I’m still learning a lot,” he concluded.