When Chase Infiniti walked into the Shrine Auditorium on the night of the 2026 SAG Awards, she did not arrive alone. Beside her was a young woman who had not yet been known to most people following Chase’s rise, but whose presence immediately caught attention.
That was Dolcé Imani Payne, Chase’s younger sister, and by the time fan photos from that evening circulated online, people had questions. Who is she? What does she do? Why does she always look so effortlessly put together? This article answers all of that, and then some.
Dolcé is not riding her sister’s coattails. She is building something of her own, in a world that intersects with Chase’s in ways that feel less like coincidence and more like the natural output of a family that has always taken creative ambition seriously.
Who Dolcé Imani Payne Is and How She Got Her Name
Dolcé Imani Payne is the younger daughter of Keith Irvin Payne and Kimberly Dawn Able, and the only sibling of Chase Infiniti. She has one younger sibling, Dolcé Imani Payne, who works in fashion.
Her name is the first thing that tells you something important about how this family operates. Keith and Kim Payne did not name their daughters casually. Keith confirmed in a March 2026 interview with the Indianapolis Star that, as parents, he and Kim intentionally gave both girls names they felt would be well received in the event something happened to them, saying that most parents have grand visions of what their children will become.
The name Dolcé is the Italian word for sweet, most widely associated in popular culture with the fashion house Dolce & Gabbana. Whether that specific association was intentional or not, the resonance is hard to ignore. A girl named Dolcé who grows up to work in fashion is either a remarkable coincidence or evidence of the kind of low-key foresight that Keith has already demonstrated once before, with a daughter named Chase Infiniti who became an actress.
Imani, her middle name, means faith in Swahili and is one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa, the celebration of African heritage and community values. The full name, Dolcé Imani, combines aesthetic elegance with cultural rootedness. That combination is, again, very Payne family.
Her Work in the Fashion Industry and Public Profile
Dolcé Imani has carved a career in the fashion industry. She has maintained a notably private profile, which is a deliberate choice that mirrors how the entire Payne family approaches the public eye. Keith and Kim have never sought the spotlight for its own sake. Chase herself has spoken about the importance of keeping certain parts of her life off-limits. Dolcé appears to share that instinct entirely.
Her younger sister, who works in fashion, is aptly named Dolcé, a detail that multiple outlets covering Chase’s rise have pointed to as another example of the Payne parents’ uncanny habit of naming their daughters in alignment with who they would become.
What is known is that Dolcé is building her own path within the industry, separate from but running parallel to Chase’s work on screen. The two worlds, fashion and acting, have never been more intertwined in Hollywood than they are right now, and the Payne sisters sit at an interesting intersection of both.
The Sisterly Bond Chase Has Been Described in Interviews
Chase does not give interviews about Dolcé the way celebrity profiles sometimes produce carefully curated sibling anecdotes. What she does do, consistently and without prompting, is show up with her sister when the moment matters.
Chase has spoken warmly of her close bond with her family, including regular visits home to Indianapolis. She shares a particularly tight-knit relationship with Dolcé, with whom she grew up riding bikes, playing sports, and exploring creative hobbies.
That last detail matters more than it might first appear. Riding bikes, playing sports, and exploring creative hobbies together paint a picture of a childhood that was genuinely shared, not just cohabited. Two girls with different temperaments and different eventual paths, spending their formative years in the same neighbourhood, doing the same things, watching the same parents, attending the same musicals with the same mother who noticed something in each of them and responded to it.
The creative exploration they shared in Indianapolis was not structured. It was the kind of exploratory play that happens when parents create an environment where imagination is welcome. Their father played jazz on the side, and their mother aimed for both Chase and Dolcé to pursue creative lives. That aim was not imposed. It was offered, and both daughters took it in completely different directions.
Dolcé at the 2026 SAG Awards: The Moment Fans Noticed Her
The 2026 SAG Awards, now officially known as the Actor Awards, were held on March 1 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Chase was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for her work in One Battle After Another. It was one of the biggest nights of her young career.
Dolcé accompanied Chase to the 2026 SAG Actor Awards on March 1, 2026, and fan photos of the sisters together generated significant attention online.
That attention was not manufactured. It was the natural response of an audience that had been following Chase closely and suddenly had a new face to connect to her story. Dolcé showed up as herself, dressed with the quiet assurance of someone who understands fashion and does not need to announce it. The photos spread because the sisters together are compelling, two young women from Indianapolis on one of Hollywood’s biggest nights, clearly rooted in something real.
The SAG ceremony was Chase’s second live televised awards presentation over the same weekend. On February 28, she had been both a presenter and a nominee for Outstanding Breakthrough Performance in a Motion Picture at the NAACP Image Awards broadcast on CBS and BET. Dolcé’s decision to be there for the SAG night specifically, after a packed weekend of ceremony appearances, was not a casual gesture. It was present.
The host that evening also gave the Payne family one more moment of unintended recognition. During the opening number, host Kristen Bell offered stage name suggestions for actors in the room, but paused when she reached Chase Infiniti. Her response was simply: no notes. That is the room Dolcé walked into beside her sister.
Growing Up Together in Indianapolis: Bikes, Sports, and Creative Play
The childhood Chase and Dolcé shared in Indianapolis was active, grounded, and notably unstructured in the best possible way. It was not a childhood defined by early career preparation or stage parent pressure. It was a regular Midwestern upbringing with unusually rich creative inputs.
Raised in Indianapolis on the cusp of predominantly white and Black neighbourhoods, Chase enjoyed a sporty childhood involving tennis, football, track and field, and weekend family bike rides. Her home was filled with music from her father, a former jazz band drummer, and frequent trips to musicals and plays fostered her love for theatre and Disney classics.
Dolcé was right there for all of it. The same bike rides, the same musicals, the same household where jazz played in the background, and the television screened films that their parents loved. The difference between the sisters was not in the inputs they received but in what each of them chose to do with those inputs.
Chase turned hers toward performance. Dolcé turned hers toward fashion. Both of those industries reward an eye for detail, an understanding of how things look and feel, and a sensitivity to cultural currents. A childhood spent watching films, attending live theatre, and listening to a father who played jazz is surprisingly good preparation for both paths.
Neither of them needed to leave Indianapolis and find their creative identity from scratch. They came already knowing what they were drawn to, because a household that took art seriously gave them a head start.
How Dolcé’s Fashion World Connects to Chase’s Red Carpet Moments
There is an obvious intersection between what Dolcé does and what Chase’s career now demands, and it would be surprising if the two were not in regular conversation about it.
Chase has been one of the standout fashion presences of the entire 2026 awards season. Following the premiere of One Battle After Another, she was named a Louis Vuitton global brand ambassador, and she has worn the French house consistently throughout the season, working with styling duo Wayman Bannerman and Micah McDonald.
At the 2026 Academy Awards, Chase wore a custom lavender Louis Vuitton silk gown that took over 750 hours to create and featured a sweetheart neckline and cascading ruffles, paired with De Beers jewellery.
At the Oscars, her hair was styled with braids worn with natural verve, strands cascading down her back, completing a look that combined high fashion with authenticity.
The consistency and intentionality of Chase’s fashion choices throughout this award season have been widely noted. Whether Dolcé’s work in fashion plays a direct role in those conversations is not publicly confirmed, but the idea that a sister who works in fashion and grew up with the same aesthetic sensibility has no input into one of the most-watched red carpet runs of the season would be surprising.
What is clear is that Chase’s fashion identity did not arrive fully formed the moment she signed with Louis Vuitton. It came from somewhere. It came from a family that valued how things looked and felt, from a mother who took her daughters to the theatre and cared about presentation, from a grandmother who dressed impeccably even to buy groceries, and from a sister who turned that same family inheritance into a professional focus.
What Chase Has Said About Their Relationship as Adults
Chase is not the kind of person who gives long interviews about her personal relationships. She protects her private life with intention, and Dolcé appears to operate similarly. But the public record, in photographs and in the few comments Chase has offered, makes the nature of their bond unmistakable.
Chase has made a point of rotating between family members at different events throughout her awards season, bringing her mother to some occasions, her father to others, and Dolcé when the moment calls for it. She told Extra about bringing her father: ” Getting to bring him has been so special.
The same warmth is evident in how she brings Dolcé. These are not obligatory appearances or family PR moves. Chase Infiniti is 25 years old and at the beginning of one of the most exciting careers in Hollywood. She is choosing, repeatedly, to share the biggest moments of that career with the people who were there before any of it existed.
Dolcé is one of those people. She is the sister who grew up in the same house, rode bikes on the same Indianapolis streets, sat beside Chase in theatre seats across town, and watched the same parents build a home where creativity was simply part of the air. She went into fashion. Chase went into acting. Both of them took the same foundation, somewhere distinctly their own.
The Payne family grew up on the edges of Indianapolis’s predominantly white and Black neighbourhoods, in a household where music was practically a fourth family member. Out of that household came two daughters pursuing creative careers in two different industries, both of whom still show up for each other when the cameras are rolling and when they are not.
