Ahead of Their Wedding, Dove Cameron and Damiano David Open Up About Love, and Life Away From the Spotlight

I meet Dove Cameron and Damiano David on the terrace of the American Academy in Rome surrounded by umbrella pines and domes stretching across the horizon. It’s a setting where Roman studies and American intellectual life meet—and perfect for a couple who have built a life across continents. David is the frontman of Måneskin—the Roman glam-rock revivalists who have gone from busking on Via del Corso to selling out arenas around the world—and Cameron, born Chloe Celeste Hosterman, is the singer and actress raised outside of Seattle who sprung from Disney fame into a pop career of her own. (The two have been together since 2023, having met backstage at an MTV Video Music Awards show where both were up for best new artist; Cameron won.)

Technically speaking they live in LA, but Rome feels equally their own—especially since David’s family is here. Cameron has been spending time in Rome while writing new music (her second album is due this fall) and becoming the face of Diesel’s first women’s fragrance under Glenn Martens’s creative direction. Today the couple, engaged since January, are back in the city that they quietly describe as home away from home. They won’t reveal where their wedding will take place, only that a date for this September has been set.

For two people whose careers unfold on enormous stages, time away from the spotlight is to be cherished. They keep to the city’s hidden corners—like Monteverde Vecchio, just a few minutes from Bravetta, the neighborhood that shaped David and the first one he took Cameron to. “Our life is so off the beaten path,” Cameron says. “We can be alone, see all of Damiano’s friends. We go to the same little restaurant a couple of times a week. It’s become one of our places.” David mentions Samovar and the legendary Bar San Calisto, where elderly regulars still play cards over cheap beers while students, artists, and musicians fill the piazza outside.

Cameron speaks flawless Italian—​or almost. “Devi parlare molto lentamente,” she says to me. (“You’ll have to speak very slowly.”) “I’m still taking lessons,” she says, which she has to squeeze in between recording sessions. Her new music is instinctive and emotionally honest, she tells me—“the most personal I’ve done.” And she’s just wrapped production on Roxy Sorkin’s debut indie film, Hot Year, a revenge thriller that sounds like a far cry from the Disney fare (Liv and Maddie, the Descendants movies) that made Cameron a household name. “I’m attracted to projects that feel a little left of center,” she says. “If the script is good, the script is good.”

David has been making new music too, as Måneskin has been on something of a hiatus—pursuing his solo career, which has felt like a leap into the unknown. Funny Little Fears, his 2025 debut, revealed a more introspective side of his songwriting. I ask what it has felt like to spend time in each other’s countries. Cameron loves it: “Entering worlds that aren’t my first experience and feeling embraced: It’s really one of the most important parts of my life.” She grew up traveling; her parents had a jewelry design company and went to India all the time. Her mother is a writer and poet, and her late father—the jewelry designer—was also a classically trained pianist who played jazz. “I’ve always felt comfortable stepping into different cultures,” she tells me, adding that she particularly loves the way Italians leap past formality. “When you meet people here, you feel like you’ve known them already,” she says. “That’s my dream. I always feel like I know people anyway. I just want to skip to the part where we’re all friends.”

Has David adopted America just as devotedly? He laughs. “I stopped looking for Rome in LA.” The two live downtown, far from any Hollywood manicured fantasy. “It’s the place where I recharge,” David says. “I sleep more, wake up later, take better care of myself.” Cameron moved to LA when she was 13. Her favorite place? “An old movie theater in Burbank, near the high school I attended. Whenever I’m overwhelmed, I just want to disappear there.” Cameron is a devoted movie lover, but when it’s the two of them at home, reality TV sneaks onto the menu. David proudly tells me he recently made Cameron binge the competition show The 50, hitting pause whenever obscure Italian celebrity lore needed explanation. “Perché comunque è cultura.” (“After all, that’s culture too.”)

It was in LA that David made his marriage proposal: an ordinary day, they were packing for a trip. Cameron had just washed her hair and had no makeup on. People dream of elaborately planned romantic gestures, he told her, but their world was already full of spectacle. Romance meant doing chores together, baking together, growing old together. “Because of the way the internet works, people only see the big moments,” Cameron says. “I was just in Malta accepting an award, and of course those photos stay in circulation. But in between that, there were two months when we were just grocery shopping, cooking, and figuring out our new juicer.”

“Home has more to do with who I’m with,” adds David. “When I’m with Chloe, even if we’re on tour and happen to be in Baden-Baden, Germany, I feel at home. We really are enough for each other.”

In this story: hair, Soichi Inagaki; makeup, Celine Martin; manicurist, Silvia Magliocco.

Produced by Magma Productions. Location: American Academy in Rome and Villa Sciarra, Rome.

This article was originally published on Vogue Italia.