§A · Dispatch · Landing
The quick hop from Piacenza to Milan, if the luxury chairman was aboard, would place him in Milan for the Spring/Summer 2027 collections and a broader post-crisis tone.
By celebplanes · 2 min read · Diego Della Valle

Diego Della Valle
Diego Della Valle's Gulfstream G550, I-ADVD, was tracked making a brief transit from Piacenza San Damiano Air Base to Milano Linate on 2 September 2026, a flight of just seven minutes across the Lombardy plain. At a maximum altitude of 8,450 feet and a ground speed brushing 292 knots, the movement reads less as a cross-country journey than as a reposition — a short hop that, if Diego Della Valle was aboard, would deliver the chairman of Tod's Group to Milan Fashion Week, which kicked off this week.
If Diego Della Valle was on that flight, the timing places him in Milan the same week Tod's is showing its Spring/Summer 2027 collection at Villa Necchi Campiglio — a presentation that, per a LaConceria report from the earlier show cycle, was already described as part of a moment when "luxury is ready for new shocks." The context is layered: the Tod's Group was taken private in a 2024 deal backed by L Catterton and LVMH, and Diego Della Valle has been speaking publicly about the impact of Trump-era tariffs on EU luxury exports, arguing in a South China Morning Post interview that "Made in Italy" cannot be replicated by AI, and that the industry has learned to manage crises.


Aboard the Gulfstream G550


The aircraft
End of article · celebplanes
The aircraft itself is managed by Sirio, the Milan-based operator, and the ADVD suffix on the tail is a transparent marker of the owner's identity, even though European registries do not publish beneficial owners. The jet has been active in recent weeks: on 21 August it moved from the Ancona region toward the Tyrrhenian, and on 23 August it traced a path across the central Mediterranean near the Greek islands, then back to the Lazio coast — a pattern consistent with late-summer movements between the Marche factory area, Sardinia, and the Aegean. The 17 August flight from the Lake Garda region toward Ancona may have returned Diego Della Valle from a weekend at the family's known property in Anacapri or from the yacht Altair III, which was last logged by AIS in the Ionian Sea three hours before the Linate landing.
Diego Della Valle's public remarks on the crisis in labour exploitation in Italian fashion — he told FashionNetwork USA in a separate interview that "small artisans are powerless because they need the work" — add a further layer to his Milan presence. The brand is debuting a new ready-to-wear direction under creative director Matteo Tamburini, and the relaunched Madison Avenue flagship in New York, celebrated in February with Uma Thurman as a guest, is part of a broader push to reaffirm Tod's as a house of leather, not just of loafers. For a chairman who personally restored the Colosseum and who has described the luxury sector as capable of withstanding "two or three more crises" over the next decade, a quick hop from a military airfield to Linate during fashion week is less a commute than a statement of intent.