Alisa Roever, Nadine Ahmad, Lidia Weber and Velichka Gospodinova Celebrate La Dolce Vita at Royal Gentlemen Club Congress Awards

Ca' Sagredo, Venice, during the closing days of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival

Thomas Misse, Anna Stukkert

VENICE, ITALY, 11 SEPTEMBER 2026. Royal Gentlemen Club has built its reputation on a short guest list and a location with a memory of its own, and this time the formula arrived at Ca' Sagredo. Hosted by founders Thomas Misse and Marek Harmony, La Dolce Vita brought the Royal Gentlemen Gala Dinner and Congress Awards to Venice in the closing days of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. Guests reached the palazzo by boat, walked up a staircase older than every brand in the room, and found an evening arranged so that jewellery, fragrance, fashion, cinema, music and philanthropy would stay within speaking distance of one another. The Congress Awards, founded by Anna Stukkert in 2016, have previously gathered guests in Munich, Berlin, Monaco, Paris, Cannes and Davos.

Thomas Misse, Lidia Weber, Oliver Weber, Marek Harmony

Jewellery set the visual key. Lidia Weber, Director of Special Projects at Oliver Weber Collection, the official jewellery partner, presented the house's new Dolce Vita Collection inside the palazzo. The Austrian house was founded in Tirol in 1994 by former Swarovski managers and works with hand set Swarovski crystal, and the new pieces were built out of the lagoon, the Carnival and the behaviour of light on moving water, which put the reference material just outside the windows for anyone who wanted to check it. 

Velichka Gospodinova

Fragrance and beauty came next, in four different registers. Velichka Gospodinova arrived from Cannes, where the International Investment Congress Awards had given her its Special Talent Award, as founder of the Bulgarian luxury house LABOR8, a brand organised around eight human senses, with numerology written into its names and its scents developed in Grasse and produced in Bulgaria after fifteen years of work in international cosmetics distribution. 

Victoria Dimitrova

Victoria Dimitrova, founder of LEDEN8, made the technological case instead, with LED light, microcurrent and contemporary design in devices for skincare and haircare intended to move professional studio treatments into a routine at home. Nadine Ahmad presented Musk Thé, the debut scent of Young Voyage, in a strictly limited edition of 1,000 bottles composed to stay close to the skin, and brought with it the story of two years spent defending the Young Voyage name in a legal dispute with Hermès, which she kept.

Massimiliano Giobergia, Anna Stukkert

Massimiliano Giobergia, General Manager of Cosmetic Tailors, the Made in Italy division of BEAUTICON VALLEY, spoke for the laboratories behind such launches, developing bespoke products in Italy for international beauty companies.

Between the founders and the performers stood Azul Coral, who came to Ca' Sagredo directly from the red carpet of a Venice Film Festival premiere. The Argentine model made her international debut in Milan and has since appeared in a campaign for Sephora and on the Fendi runway in Rome, with work across Europe, Dubai and Asia. She also founded the real estate venture Azur Propiedades, and will compete in Miss Universe Argentina next year.

Alessandro Bressanello

Cinema was present in several languages. Alessandro Bressanello, born in Venice, opened the Tag Teatro in the city in 1976 and has spent much of his career on Commedia dell'Arte and on the Carnival of Venice, while international audiences know him from Paolo Sorrentino's The Hand of God, from Spectre, and most recently as Giovanni Battista Meneghini, the husband of Maria Callas, opposite Angelina Jolie in Pablo Larraín's Maria.

Caroline Azmy, photographer

Caroline Azmy, trained at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Egypt, began on stage and reached a mass audience through Egyptian television in productions including The Godfather, Ramadan Kareem and Abu Al Arousa, before later roles took her past the romantic parts of her early career. 

 Christina Duxa

Christina Duxa, Founder and Creative Director of AI Filmfest Athens and of her own couture label, and Manana Palagashvili, who co organised that same Athens festival as a singer, producer and artist manager, completed a table where film was being made, dressed and programmed at once.

The Congress Awards themselves went to two guests working at opposite ends of a single idea, that culture has to be handed on to somebody. Bressanello was honoured in his own city, during its festival. 

Thomas Misse , Alisa Roever, Anna Stukkert,  Marek Harmony

Alisa Roever was honoured for Angels Helpers, the philanthropic organisation she founded to support children without access to professional arts education, musical instruments and mentorship, and which grew out of her own encounter with the cost of serious music study.

Music closed the evening and tied it together. Palagashvili stepped out from behind the producer and sang for the guests. Soprano Alina Zamalieva, who studied at the Belcanto Academy with the legendary Mirella Freni, brought the classical tradition into the palazzo, and with it the Callas thread that Bressanello had opened earlier. 

Thomas Misse. Ksenia Wheelman, Anna Stukkert, Yuri Wheelman, Marek Harmony

Yuri and Ksenia Wheelman, known as Wheelman Duo, followed with their Couture Crossover concept, setting classical voices against film music and contemporary sound in a partnership begun at the Bolshoi Theatre, and 

Rezeda Kalimullina

Rezeda Kalimullina, whose career runs through soul, jazz and pop, took the programme to its end.

Outside, the Grand Canal went on supplying a backdrop no production designer would dare invent. In the most crowded week of the film calendar, La Dolce Vita made a quieter argument about what contemporary culture looks like when its separate worlds are asked to share one room.

EVENT INFORMATION

Royal Gentlemen Gala Dinner and Congress Awards | Friday, 11 September 2026 | 6.30 pm | Ca' Sagredo Hotel, Venice | Black Tie

Hosted by Royal Gentlemen Club | Thomas Misse and Marek Harmony | Congress Awards founded by Anna Stukkert | Official Jewellery Partner Oliver Weber Collection | Press contact info@royalgentlemen.fr

CA' SAGREDO HOTEL | 11 SEPTEMBER 2026