Photo provided to China Daily

Guests at the cocktail party and dinner to kick off the opening included Tom Ford, Richard Buckley, Christopher Kane, Manolo Blahnik, Valentino, Giancarlo Giammetti, Osman Yousefzada, Alessandro Dell'Acqua, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Anna Zegna, Laudomia Pucci, Nicola Bulgari, Elizabeth McGovern and Miroslava Duma. The evening brought back Italian memories for everyone.

"Boy, she had an appetite for jewelry－I can tell you that," says Bulgari of Elizabeth Taylor, who he says would drive her car straight into the private courtyard of the Bulgari store in Rome to avoid the paparazzi. "The magic would begin when she was alone in a (private) wood-paneled room with Richard Burton, and she started choosing the jewelry."

McGovern also recalled her salad days in Rome. "My first adult trip to Rome was when I went there to film Once Upon a Time in America. I loved it－it burst open my world," says McGovern, whose latest CD with her band Sadie and the Hotheads,

Still Waiting, has just been released.

Eva Cavalli says she's proud to be Italian, even though she is Austrian. "The Italians are happy, they're positive, they have the sun and they don't take themselves too seriously. Things are not good in Italy right now, but the Italians are still happy," she says.