Dolce & Gabbana (Q1749)
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Italian fashion house
- Dolce & Gabbana S.R.L.
- Dolce & Gabbana SRL
- Dolce and Gabbana S.R.L.
- Dolce and Gabbana
- D&G
- Dolce Gabbana
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Dolce & Gabbana |
Italian fashion house |
|
Statements
1985
co-founders
design roles
Domenico Dolce's assistant (womenswear)
British ambassador
freelance printmaking
At Dolce & Gabbana, blondes do have more fun. The designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have lately noticed a solemnity that’s descended over the fashion industry. “Fashion is a serious business—I know—but maybe now it’s too serious,” Dolce said. Their idea for spring was to take us to the movies; they channeled cinema’s most glamorous blondes—Marilyn Monroe, Monica Vitti, Marlene Dietrich—with platinum wigs, pin-up dresses, and rigid-cupped bras. Between quiet luxury and bullet bras, it’s no contest.Madonna, who famously revived this 1950s look at the peak of her fame 30-odd years ago, was in the audience today. Jean Paul Gaultier was responsible for her Blond Ambition cone bras, but let’s not forget that Dolce and Gabanna designed costumes for her Girlie Show tour in 1993, in support of her album Erotica. At the time, her controversy-stirring coffee table book Sex was hot off the presses and the pop superstar was doing her part “to liberate America—free us all of our hang-ups,” as she famously said. When the designers greeted her after today’s show, the lip readers in the room could see her saying, “I want everything” from beneath her black lace veil.On the runway, the bras were worn as lingerie, peeking out from underneath a classic trench or above a balconette-bodice dress. Or they were designed into the looks, from stretchy cocktail numbers to sartorial jackets. A double-breasted black satin tuxedo with built-in cone-shaped cups was a real feat of pattern-making; there are very few labels that could pull it off with such convincing aplomb.Dolce and Gabbana have been reconsidering their oeuvre in the lead-up to the 40th anniversary of their brand. After last season’s ode to the tux, here they let some light in. A light pink long-sleeved sheath, modest save for the provocative bullet-bra bodice, was modeled on a photo of a young, smiling Marilyn Monroe. There was a strapless number with the same ingenue spirit in baby blue, and the lush florals were also pretty, especially the bold red rose print on a white ground.And the viability of the bullet bra? It’s actually turned up on a couple of red carpets this year. Now that the nipple has been freed, padded and pointy is just a swing of the fashion pendulum. The models descended a mirrored staircase lit up like a movie set. It was easy enough to imagine starlets snapping these dresses up for the red carpet—as well as the many women who long to look like them.
21 September 2024
It might sound a cliché, but like the best (Italian) wines, Domenico Dolce & Stefano Gabbana’s work seems to get better with age. The men’s collection they sent out today was a handsome example of flavorful restraint and carefree concision. Called Italian Beauty, it read like an homage to the debonair attitude of Italian men, and to their effortless ways with vanity and seductive sense of self-presentation. Actor Marcello Mastroianni was the perfect embodiment of that posture, and apparently one of the collection’s references.While in recent seasons they’ve leaned on a sort of reduced rendition of their signifiers, Stefano and Domenico here indulged embellishments a bit more; they hinted at the Italian flair for ornamentation while threading it lightly. The focus was on artisanal craft and the artistry of thefatto a mano(the handmade), a fundamental of Italian culture that they celebrated magnificently in their exhibition Dal Cuore alle Mani (From the Heart to the Hands) at Milan’s Palazzo Reale. The collection’s opening looks, a series of boxy short-sleeved shirts and blousons, were entirely crocheted in open-work natural raffia, or in soft leather replicating the woven straw texture, toughened up with contrasting trimmings and worn over high-waisted, loose fitting pin-tucked trousers, rolled up at the ankles for ease. Ease was actually the overall feel of the show, hinting at the easygoing demeanor Italians manage to maintain in both pleasure and hardship, and their nonchalant, almost blasé approach to the abundant beauty of their land.Dolce and Gabbana are among the best tailors in the business; they displayed their deft way with the soft construction of suiting, slightly inspired by the formalbel vestireand decorum of the ’50s, in a series of impeccably relaxed costumes in fluid natural fabrications, mostly in tones of off-white, with overtures to dark green and burgundy, and of course to what they call “Sicily black.” Summery striped polo shirts, sleeveless sweaters or knitted waistcoats were worn tucked into amphora trousers. Coral embroideries were the only decorative highlights of an otherwise well-edited, fast-paced yet breezily languid collection—unfussy and with no concession to pyrotechnics. It was just a reminder of how good Stefano and Domenico can be at what they do.
15 June 2024
With more Milan brands in the midst of major overhauls than not, it pays to be Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. With nearly 40 years of experience, they don’t just know who they are and what they stand for, they’re good at executing it. Indeed, they’ve been at it long enough to witness their early designs being collected as vintage.Over the last couple of years, they’ve embarked on a project of sharpening their own signatures. At one recent show they even sent out clothes with labels bearing the original year and season they came down the runway. They’ve never shied away from repetition, but lately they’ve pursued it and made it a virtue. “It’s by perfecting essential pieces that we have created our personal and recognizable style,” the press notes stated.For fall, they chose the tuxedo as their subject. It’s “the ultimate symbol of pure style,” they explained. “The simpler a piece, a classic like the tuxedo, the more perfect it is, eternal, free from the constraints of time.” A Spencer jacket with pick-stitched satin revers, over a lacy camisole and briefs and a wisp of a skirt tied with a big ribbon bow, opened the show. From there, they experimented with different hem lengths in single- and double-breasted styles, tweaking the lapels’ widths and notch heights accordingly. Where one tux was boxy and oversized, another was nipped in the waist with padded hips for an hourglass-y shape.Rounding out the show were boudoir-ish peignoirs, sometimes accented with satin lapels of their own or accessorized with a hand-pleated cummerbund; lacy cocktail dresses and stretchy crystal-strewn ones; and bold statement coats in shaggy faux fur, leopard spots, or feathers. But the tux was the thing. It was a showcase for the designers’ famous sartorial exactitude, and a lesson for the many less experienced designers currently trying to make their mark in Milan. To achieve Dolce & Gabbana’s kind of longevity, it pays to have a clear, unique point of view.
24 February 2024
The invitation to today’s Dolce & Gabbana men’s show came on a thick black card overprinted with just the word “Sleek,” so you thought you knew what to expect—lean silhouettes devoid of embellishments, some polished gloss, fastidious grooming. But as Domenico Dolce pointed out at the press conference, words often bring us to all the wrong places, evoking predictable images or meanings. “What this collection is about is actually quite simple—true elegance,” he said. “It’s about the beauty of the handmade and the supreme quality that comes from our almost obsessive knowledge of the rules of tailoring.”It’s knowledge they’ve certainly mastered, as their sartoria was established in the first place when they launched their brand in the mid-’80s; the practice of the fatto a mano—the handmade—has always given substance to their designs. It’s not a secret that the suits coming from their ateliers are among the best in the business. This collection was a celebration of the designers’ expertise, grounded in the great tradition of classic Italian tailoring yet synced up to meet the renewed flair for elegance of young generations. “The proportions and construction are of the essence: A well-cut jacket gives you posture and presence,” Stefano Gabbana said. “Yet it’s not only a decades-long passionate dedication to exacting execution,” Dolce said, “it’s also about our constant rumination on the idea of masculinity.”The show’s 62 looks were mostly suits and mostly in black, with only three suits in white, a coat in camel and another in gray, and a couple of fabulous, outstanding furs made out of fluffy shearling. Tailoring obviously reigned supreme, infused with both precision and sensuality, permeated with a sense of romance and old-school allure that the designers called “aristocratic as in a Visconti movie, fit for a young Helmut Berger or Rudolf Nureyev.”The elegant repertoire of spencer jackets, tuxedos, and tight coats was given a languid formality, with luscious blouses in creamy satin replacing white poplin smoking shirts and frivolous bows closing buttonless blazers. Thin scarf collars and organza flowers on flat black patent evening shoes hinted at a sensuous take on the masculine. The soundtrack (a soulful piano piece) as well as the soft-gray padding of the venue gave the show a chic, velvety vibe.As always with Dolce & Gabbana, there was no shortage of front-row action.
While Jeff Bezos took in the atmosphere, fiancée Lauren Sanchez watched proudly as her son Nikko Gonzalez walked the show. Outside the Metropol venue, the usual screaming crowd of teenagers went crazy for young Korean stars Rowoon, Younghoon, Hyunjae, and DPR Ian, who were dressed not in shredded denims or slouchy tracksuits, but in Dolce & Gabbana’s impeccably cut sartoria suits.
13 January 2024
While we waited and waited for Kylie Jenner to turn up at Dolce & Gabbana this afternoon, Billie Eilish’sBarbiesong, “What Was I Made For?,” played on repeat. It was 47 minutes past the hour when Ms. Jenner finally strolled in, so late you had to wonder why nobody shouted, “Not for this, I wasn’t made for this!” [Editor’s note: The brand later clarified that the show was delayed by other causes.]Tardiness aside, this was a pretty terrific demonstration of what Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana can do. The designers are approaching their 40th anniversary, a milestone bound to prompt plenty of reflection, but they’ve been reinvestigating their archives for some time now, prompted in part by celebrities like Jenner, who’ve been requesting vintage pieces or sourcing them for themselves.In the showroom, their spring mood board was pinned with photos of ’90s faces like Monica Bellucci, Linda Evangelista, and Nadja Auermann in early Dolce & Gabbana, mixed among images of Catherine Deneuve inBelle de Jourand Helmut Newton’s famous shot of Yves Saint Laurent’s then-radical Le Smoking. Seduction was clearly on the agenda.If you’re on the hunt for a satin corset dress or a delicate tulle slip with a triangle bra, briefs, and garter belt to match, Domenico and Stefano are your guys. Post-pandemic, lingerie has become a regular sight on the runways and on the streets, but these two were doing this kind of thing before the young women rocking the look today were even born. Scrolling further back, Deneuve’s Peter Pan–collar ’60s shift got a fresh airing, and the glossy trenches and coordinating kerchiefs conjured a similar time frame.Timelessis the word for the tailoring that’s the flip side of all their skin-baring corsetry. A traditionally cut double-breasted tuxedo in ivory with black satin lapels and pocket flaps was striking, but the designers did more playful things as well. Like twisting a jacket body to the side to create a one-sleeve look, and cropping a single-breasted tux at the waist to show off a pair of satin knickers worn over pantyhose. The pantsless look is gaining real traction at the shows, with influencers seen wearing versions of it. Why wouldn’t Dolce & Gabbana stake a claim to that?
23 September 2023
Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce are in soul-searching mode. They’ve been questioning the meaning of their practice for quite some time, and every season they seem to be reaching a deeper understanding of what their work is about. Concepts of identity; the theme of leaving a long-lasting, recognizable legacy; the permanence or impermanence of trends—this is what they keep ruminating about.The depth of the conversation they’re having was apparent at the press conference before today’s show. Punctuated by their sharp sense of humor, it was as entertaining as it was thought-provoking. Domenico said: “Bombarded as we are by the constant noise of social media and by the turnover of trends, influencers of not-so-reliable standing, and a deluge of images, we keep asking ourselves, ‘Will people remember us? Will we leave a remarkable-enough legacy, a style that stands the test of time?’”The invitation to the show arrived in a black envelope containing a metal replica of a credit card, together with a booklet of the collection’s images. The word STYLE was printed in capital letters on its front page. Stefano explained: “The credit card is an indicator, a symbol of identity. You are its only owner, it’s about you being who you are. Style also is about having a strong identity, solid foundations.” Domenico chimed in: “‘Style’ is rather different than ‘fashion.’ So we’ve tried to make something new, but within the codes of our own style, keeping it firm and recognizable while making it evolve.”Dolce & Gabbana shouldn’t be afraid of not leaving a legacy. Their codes are powerful enough to be twisted and turned without losing an inch of their inherent character. Menswear has always been an expressive exercise for them, and, for spring, they excavated from their repertoire a series of signifiers that were rendered in refreshed, streamlined interpretations. The list comprised “the tank top, the color black to which we’re devoted, thecoppola, the rosary, lace, transparencies, Sicily.” “But above all, it’s the cut and how our tailoring is constructed,” they added.The approach wasn’t exactly reductionist, yet a certain gentle, modern simplification was at play throughout the collection. The silhouette was slender, just occasionally kept roomier, yet soft and flowy, anchored by light, flat boot-socks in supple leather. Colors were limited to a sharp palette of black, white, caramel, gray, and dark brown.
Prints were absent, except from the polka dots on a see-through chiffon blouse with a breezy trailing bow. Opposing the handsome tailored precision of sculpted pantsuits, transparencies played with sensuality rather than carnality; embellishments were sparsely embroidered on crisp Oxford ensembles; organza flowers from Alta Moda were pinned on lapels. In a nod to the pagan deities of Magna Grecia and the ancient Sicilian statuary, tank tops were reinterpreted into tight-draped bustiers and T-shirts, worn with high-waist fluid trousers.“A dress has to fit perfectly to an actual body; it doesn’t have to be just trendy or cool,” they said. “That’s why the discipline of construction, for us, is so important.” From the front row, house aficionados Machine Gun Kelly, K-pop star Doyoung, Italian singer Blanco, and a string of towering basketball players seemed utterly convinced that Dolce & Gabbana’s legacy is in a pretty good shape.
17 June 2023
Are Dolce & Gabbana the best tailors in the world of luxury fashion? At least one of their Milan rivals says so. Spelling out who here wouldn’t be wise, for them or for me, but I do have it on good authority. This collection delivered on the promise of that reputation.“We love in some way to start from the beginning,” Stefano Gabbana said at a preview in their atelier yesterday, explaining they wanted each look to have the purity of a sketch. Flash and excess have become house codes equal to their sartorialism over the decades, but Domenico Dolce was trained as a tailor. That’s the foundation. “I’m obsessed about the cut,” he confirmed.Kim Kardashian was in the house this afternoon. Last season Dolce and Gabbana worked with her to identify archive pieces worthy of modern tweaks. Today she was a front-row guest, but the project they started together has kept the designers’ interest. An hourglass shaped black double-wool coat bearing the label 1997-98 at the left cuff is a fine example of Dolce’s obsession; ditto a white tux with black satin revers and cummerbund, the model of which seemed specially chosen for her resemblance to the icy blonde Nadja Auermann, a favorite of the photographer Helmut Newton, who liked a woman in a strong suit as much as these guys do.Lingerie dressing is a look that’s been embraced by a new generation of designers and their young followers, but Dolce and Gabbana were ahead of this particular curve by a good 30 years, a fact proven by the exposed corset from 1991 that they paired with a suit whose cropped jacket and cigarette pants were evocative of a matador’s outfit. There was much more of this kind of thing on the runway: lacy teddies, embroidered tulle slips, and bras with poured metal cups mixed with other corsets bearing hooks-and-eyes, lacing details, and gold whaleboning.Where does their instinct toward classicism and the timeless come from? “This last year, when it was fashion, fashion, fashion, volume, volume, ’80s—it was exhausting,” Dolce said. “You know when you eat too much, and you need still water? We just want to work with the best quality silk, the best quality wool. No strange fabrics.” But that doesn’t mean they completely neglected the extras. One parka looked glossily gold-leafed and another was lined entirely in feathers. Anok Yai’s show-closing red crystal wiggle dress was a knockout.
25 February 2023
“The world is overwhelmed by images and by all sorts of distractions,” said Domenico Dolce at today’s press conference. “We just felt the strong need to go at the essence of who we are. We said to ourselves, ‘Let’s do us, let’s do what we really believe in.’” “Reducing. Stripping anything unnecessary away,” chimed in Stefano. They called the collectionEssenza, Italian forEssence, a concept of almost philosophical depth whose exploration entailed intense soul-searching—and lots of black.The designers were adamant: “This has nothing to do with minimalism, rather with simplicity,” they stated. “These are our codes—which span from black, to black, to eighty percent black,” they joked. In the Dolce & Gabbana dark black sea of impeccably tailored suits and masterfully sharp-cut coats, which ultimately was what this season’s collection was about, they introduced just a modicum of pearl grey, and two stellar white pantsuits. The rest was as dark as the lava of Sicilian volcanos, with just occasional flashes of light given by tone-on-tone crystal embroideries, to reference the wet translucence of erupted magma. Black for Dolce & Gabbana is a fundamental signifier, “almost violent in its intensity,” said Domenico. “We’ve envisioned this collection as if it were a photo in black and white: timeless, eternal, without any chromatic vehemence which would’ve made it current, temporary,alla moda.”They didn’t really think about the overall look, rather about the single piece, making each one outstanding; avoiding distractions, they were after the synthesis of a neat silhouette. A sumptuous black cape, a shapely waistcoat or a voluminous greatcoat were worn on bare skin, over just a pair of boxers: nudity as a medium, to give emphasis to the beautiful essentiality of the construction. There was sensuality in the vintage girdles and corsets on bare torsos, peeking from fluid trousers. And sensuality in the absolute mastery of the cut, which is where Dolce & Gabbana’s true essence ultimately shines: “What we’ve been mostly attracted to is experimenting on new cuts, jackets cut in a new way, new collars, new fastenings; we wanted to enhance the simple complexity of the handmade techniques,” they said.The journeyà la rechercheof their essence didn’t take place so much in the archive as in the search for new, modern dimensions.
Proof were the pièces de résistance Stefano and Domenico served for the show finale: two perfectly fitted jackets in white crêpe cut from the curvaceous, hourglass-y patterns of their impeccable women’s blazers. “Usually it’s the masculine construction that’s applied to that of women’s jackets, but we did the contrary,” they explained. “How can a jacket tailored for a woman beautifully fit a man’s body? We worked with our artisans, and they came up with such incredibly sculpted shapes, we were amazed.” Shapely and fitted at the waist, slightly padded and rounded at the hips with a slight crinoline effect, with shoulders strong and commanding, they looked absolutely fabulous. On the front row, Machine Gun Kelly, Blanco and a host of others looked positively awestruck.
14 January 2023
The usual pandemonium outside the Dolce & Gabbana show was cranked up to 11 this afternoon. Three days ago, Kim Kardashian touched down in Milan and posted a pic of herself disembarking a PJ with the hashtags #CiaoKim and #DolceGabbana. The designers have been linked to the Kardashians since this past May, when they wardrobed Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker’s wedding in Portofino. At a press conference this morning, Kim said that today’s collaboration came about when Dolce and Gabbana discovered that the clotheshorse brought her own collection of vintage D&G to the nuptials, including “some pieces that even they didn’t have in their own archives.”The proposal went something like this: Kim would act as curator, selecting pieces from past collections, specifically the 20-year period between 1987 and 2007 (conveniently spanning the Y2K years that are trending at the moment), and the designers would rework those pieces for today, but subtly, so that the links between then and now are obvious enough for the social media audience, where so much of fashion communication plays out in 2022.The benefits for Dolce & Gabbana are plenty. The Kardashian-Jenners in attendance today boast a combined 652 million followers. As for Kim, hooking up with Dolce & Gabbana doesn’t just burnish her high-fashion image, but thanks to the internet’s capacity to flatten time, it somehow also stretches her influence. She became a household name in 2007 whenKeeping Up With the Kardashiansbegan airing, but with this partnership she’s put her stamp on two extra decades. Damn, she’s good at the fame game.Explaining her affinity for the brand at the press conference, Kim said, “Yes, I have this futuristic alien Barbie personality, which I like. But in my soul I feel very sensual Italian mob wife at the same time. I don’t know if that’s appropriate to say.” Of course, Dolce & Gabbana has worked the sensual Italian wife trope to its own ends, as editorials and ad campaigns of D&G favorites from back in the day—including Eva Herzigova and Helena Christensen, who sat in the front row—attest.On the runway, corsets, wiggle dresses, and lingerie sets were stitched with labels at the hip or wrist identifying the year they were first presented. At the same time, other pieces served Kim’s own interests. “It’s very Skims-y,” a seatmate said, nodding at a stretch-jersey number circa 1990 and a new one made in its image. For those of you living under a rock, Skims is Kim’s $3.
2 billion shapewear brand. Presumably, all of this is future content for Hulu’sThe Kardashiansshow, too; season two premiered a couple of nights ago.All the top fashion brands are getting into the entertainment business. Dolce & Gabbana has always been an early adopter. With Kim’s help it just raised the stakes.
24 September 2022
Editor’s Note: This year marks the tenth anniversary of Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda, which will be celebrated with a show in Sicily, Italy. Ahead of that event, we’re revisiting some of the label’s 1990s shows. The spring 1997 collection was presented in October 1996 in Milan.In 2009 Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana would make headlines for seating bloggers, considered upstart outsiders by many, alongside established print editors. Their interest in technology predates this by a decade however. The title of their spring 1999 show—as reported by the *Los Angeles Times—*was Sicily Through the Internet, which translated, in part, to a mix of advanced fabric and natural motifs, i.e. swimming sardines hand-painted on a coated material.Miuccia Prada’s use of industrial nylon in the 1980s kicked off an interest in so-called technical fabrics that reached a peak around the turn of the century (at least in terms of press coverage). Sports references like wide cargo pants and tanks tops aside, Dolce and Gabbana mainly stuck with their body-hugging and lingerie silhouettes this season, but rendered them using unexpected materials, like a shiny hologram-effect fabric, lacquered silk, rubberized silk, and latex with lace ironed into it. Warp prints had what might now be called a glitch effect.Despite the slick technological vibe, the mood was somber: About half the show was rendered in black. However, there was a certain frisson created between the soberness of the hue and the sexiness of the cuts. Ultra fitted and mini cardigans were paired with slim strapless dresses or high waisted pants, and created a very high midriff effect that was a cut above.
8 July 2022
Editor’s Note: This year marks the tenth anniversary of Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda, which will be celebrated with a show in Sicily. Ahead of that event, we’re revisiting some of the label’s 1990s shows. The spring 1997 collection was presented in October 1996 in Milan.Speaking toThe Independentin 1996, Domenico Dolce set out his idea of “crisscross” dressing, explaining it as a merging of the feminine and the masculine. For spring 1997 these categories seemed to coexist rather than dissolve, but there were other interesting dichotomies at work in this memorable, and Madonna-approved, collection.Madonna, 1997.Photo: ABC Photo Archives / Getty ImagesWhen writing about it,Voguefocused on Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s mix of old and new, explaining that “the mix masters demonstrate their flair for vintage hodgepodge, pairing a long chiffon leopard-print peignoir with a blue embroidered sarong.” The designers also played with material contrasts, adding fur collars to airy toppers and using sturdy yarns for see-through crochet pieces.The show ended with a parade of sheer slip dresses worn over leopard print panties, which sounds sizzling, but overall the show did not produce a roar, but a gentle and pleasing purr. There was an unexpected coziness to the collection in which the idea of bedroom dressing took on a double meaning. Pinstripes aside, the chintz prints, crochets, and chinoiserie embroideries could have all been lifted from grandmother’s house.Though Gabbana described the coats as something “the Queen Mother might wear,” the fit was more sensual, and the use of knits, especially, added a rustic, Mediterranean touch. For all the exterior signaling of sex via lingerie touches and transparencies, this outing seemed to focused on the world of interiors. As Gabbana told The Independent several months after the show, “Clothes and furniture are to me inseparable.”
8 July 2022
Editor’s Note: This year marks the tenth anniversary of Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda, which will be celebrated with a show in Sicily. Ahead of that event, we’re revisiting some of the label’s 1990s shows. The spring 1992 collection was presented in October 1991 in Milan.In 1991, when Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana presented their spring 1992 collection, which featured lots of black lingerie—already a brand signature—they were still considered “new kids” on the scene. But not only were they new, they were determined to be different. In fact, the AP observed, they had “made a point of keeping their distance from the staid Milanese style, which brought the made-in-Italy label to the top of the international fashion parade in the ’80s.”They did so by playing up Dolce’s Southern heritage (he is from Palermo), and playing a wink-wink game with national stereotypes. “Dolce e Gabbana’s clothes take their cue from old-fashioned Italian ‘classics,’ wroteVoguewhen introducing the brand to readers in 1985. “Their inspiration: specifically, Sicilian women.” Or, more accurately, a fanciful and cinematic version of sirens and nonnas, sunshine and clothing lines. (The “Catholic Imagination,” curator Andrew Bolton’s phrase, is always alive and well in Dolce & Gabbana’s work and sets up a “good” versus “bad girl” dichotomy, that was also present in Gianni Versace’s work).Dolce and Gabbana literally spelled out some of their inspirations near the end of their show, when red sequins on black separates listed the first names of screen divas Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, and Ava Gardner. To the starry Cinecittà references, the duo added a more populist touch: looks made out of printed potato sacks, that communicated sentiments about love and s-e-x. (Madonna’s book on the subject would be published the following year.) Some contemporary reviewers balked at the idea of seeing the boudoir looks on the street, others embraced it. As one newspaper headline announced: “The Lingerie Look: Not Just for Madonna.” The pop star and these nascent designers were operating on the same pop cultural wavelength, bending iconic imagery and tropes to their own ends to speak to the moment while evoking storied heritages (national, fashionable, cinematic, etc.).Forty years on this sexy collection might feel tamer than it did at the time, yet it unmistakably remains a strong and pure expression of the Dolce & Gabbana ethos.
8 July 2022
Dolce & Gabbana founded their house in 1985, and showed their first men’s collection in 1990, at a time when fashion was booming, fueled by creative freedom, newness and daring experimentation. They’ve come a long way from those beginnings, but nostalgia isn’t part of the baggage they carry. They’ve always moved relentlessly, fiercely forward, in bad and good times, and so far they’ve resisted going down memory lane.However, their body of work is so massive, and their celebrity status so widespread, that a dive into the archive (and just a modicum of soul searching) felt somehow right at this point in their career—especially because young generations today are drawn to heritage luxury brands and their history, and resale e-commerce sites have triggered a vintage craze. Also, the impressive parterre of celebrities who have paraded Stefano and Domenico’s creations over the years are now asking for unique archival pieces for their red carpet appearances, or for their extravagant weddings. Kourtney Kardashian’s hyperbolic marriage in Portofino was a feast of Dolce & Gabbana outfits old and new, and was actually instrumental in setting off the designers’ deep dive into the archive.At first they were surprised and curious to be asked for pieces from their late-’90s/early 2000s collections, but they took it in stride, seeing it as a creative opportunity. Revisiting their past felt like “going to the therapist,” said Domenico, a bit of an introspective journey but “we’ve definitely had lots of fun, and it was really interesting,” chimed in Stefano. They extracted a series of original pieces they thought particularly meaningful because of their intrinsic “intellectual integrity and authenticity,” and which they thought would still be relevant today. “It was a sort of intuitive and random process,” they said, which gelled through excellent styling into a spring collection of re-edited pieces from the ’90s through the 2000s walking the runway together with new propositions designed with a contemporary spirit. Every garment will have a dedicated ID label, identifying the year it was first presented together with the SS2023 inscription.
Quintessentially Dolce & Gabbana key looks from past collections abounded in today’s show, feeling like an updated, cool déjà vu—the hunky white ribbed tank top with matching no-logo underwear briefs; the perfectly tailored tux worn over ripped denims; the heavily embellished blazers and T-shirts redolent of Sicilian sacred imagery; the sexual see-through black lace shirts; the slim fitting stretchy pantsuits with oversized double-breasted jackets. They still looked plausible and fresh, showing incredible longevity and pertinence with what young generations want to wear today: “They’ve no memory of our past, their knowledge stops at 2000s,” the designers said. Dolce & Gabbana’s minimalism, streamlined yet sensual, is not only an appealing legacy in concept, it’s also a covetable and wearable option for vintage-crazy Gen Zers. “They’re hungry for real fashion, while today there are just logos everywhere,” said Domenico.Hovering over the stream of archival/re-edited/new pieces was the spirit of David Beckham, the original metrosexual archetype and longtime muse to the designers’ vision of menswear, who “was the first in the 2000s who crossed the boundaries between elitist fashion and soccer popular culture, pairing the sartorial with the ripped-off, wearing jewelry, diamond earrings, embellished headbands,” they said. Several looks in the collection were a tribute to him. “He introduced real glamour into menswear, it was a key fashion moment which changed the conversation about how men dressed,” said Stefano. Beckham was missed at today’s show, and front rows were filled with new young stars of the sport firmament. Dolce & Gabbana’s long lasting appeal doesn’t look like waning anytime soon. “We’re always very critical of what we do, and we bore easily,” the said. “But looking at all that we’ve been able to achieve so far, things that have lasted and become kind of historic, we feel extremely proud.”
18 June 2022
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana make a point of embracing new technologies and forms of media. There was the famous fall 2009 show when bloggers replaced editors in the front row, the season when influencers swapped their seats for the runway, and another when drones modeled handbags. In 2022 everyone’s talking about the metaverse. Dolce and Gabbana transported us there with their backdrop, a virtual world of neon skyscrapers, D&G graffiti, and scantily clad cyber avatars.Fashion keeps asking what we’ll wear in the metaverse, but that might be the wrong question. The dress codes of virtual reality have already seeped into our IRL existence. What are the catsuits that have dominated runways lately but gaming skins for real life? And don’t the face-shield sunglasses everybody’s taken to wearing look like next-gen Oculus headsets?The D&G guys worked this angle in their fall collection, switching between the lingerie stylings of the avatars that populated the virtual world of their backdrop and pneumatic puffers with surfaces so glossy they looked Photoshopped. Their new tailoring had superheroine proportions—all inverted triangle silhouettes topped by shoulders several inches past out-to-there in techy synthetic fabrics. Giant faux furs and cartoon graphics commissioned for T-shirts and hoodies from Gianpiero D’Alessandro amped up a cartoonish element.Cheers to experimentation and to Dolce and Gabbana’s enthusiasm for our virtual future. They have reason for that: Last fall the designers set a $6 million record for digital fashion NFTs. But the outsize shapes here were a world away from the dressmaking and sartorialism that have driven Dolce & Gabbana’s mega-success. Nobody cuts a more persuasive hourglass dress or a sexier double-breasted suit. They own that IRL and they should in the metaverse too.
26 February 2022
Dolce & Gabbana’s flair for high-style pyrotechnics and glamorous entertainment never disappoints. You go to their shows with the same sense of anticipation as when you go to a fabulous, impossible-to-get-tickets performance of the hottest music sensation—which makes you wonder how they can pull something so consistently spectacular out of their hats every season.Quick to pick up on Gen Z’s culturalhumusand its hunger for impactful gestures in fashion, for men’s the designers provided a coup de théâtre. With impeccable timing, they had the internet-breaking couple of the moment, Megan Fox and her husband-to-be Machine Gun Kelly, attending the show. Under Fox’s adoring gaze from the front row, the willowy, bleached-blond and extensively tattooed Kelly walked the runway as if he were to the catwalk born, resplendent in über-stylish bespoke suits (which he changed thrice) blazing with myriads of metallic studs and crystals. It goes without saying that his live rendition of the hitMy Ex’s Best Friendbrought the house down.At the press conference before the show, Dolce and Gabbana raved about the artist, praising his talent and “his taste for beauty and his appreciation for sartorial elegance.” But beyond its evident social media savvy, the choice signaled the designers’ clever focus on attitudes and inclinations of the younger generations they’re courting. They rightly believe that understanding the zeitgeist is a priority, and that tailoring their practice according to a new set of rules is what makes their work pertinent for today—and also exciting for them from a creative standpoint: “We’re challenging ourselves,” said Gabbana. “We’re questioning everything we’ve been used to. Things are changing, and we welcome that change; we want to experience the new, which makes us evolve and move forward.” Dolce chimed in: “Staying put in our comfort zone feels not-so-comfortable anymore.”Machine Gun Kelly’s performance was just the peak of a show built on layered collaborations with other up-and-coming artistic talents. Multidisciplinary artist Rocco Pezzella was given free rein to emblazon the humongous sweats and the magnified, overblown pants that were one of the collection’s aesthetic nods to the metaverse world the designers are willing to explore. Quick to jump on the NFT bandwagon, they recently secured an auction sale of a nine-piece digital collection totaling the equivalent of nearly $6 million. Not bad for newcomers.
15 January 2022
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana aren’t immune to the Y2K fever sweeping through fashion this season, and why should they be? The year 2000 was peak Dolce & Gabbana, a moment when the glorious excesses of their aesthetic were swinging the fashion pendulum from the minimalist ’90s to the go-go early ’00s. Dolce and Gabbana have picked up on the renewed interest in the era. Their young assistants are enthusiastic about that part of their archive, and on-the-rise Gen Z pop stars are requesting vintage pieces, too.Backstage Gabbana said, “We thought we’d do something not similar, but in the same mood as that 2000 collection. We’re coming out of a dark time”—meaning the pandemic—“and we want to enjoy life. We want light.” Their Metropol venue glinted like a diamond, with a mirrored runway, a faceted backdrop, and no fewer than 75 spotlights, but the set had nothing on the clothes and accessories themselves, which were tricked out in crystals by the kilo, even more than the men’s collection they presented in June.Clicking through their 21-year-old collection is to clock parallels between then and now: the pelmet mini and sheer shirt combos, the beaded fringe skirts, the exposed lingerie, and logo underwear. Jennifer Lopez starred on a couple of T-shirts here in what looked like D and G’s tribute to another brand with staying power. But there were some other forward-thinking updates. Upcycling is also a trend they’ve picked up on, and they bought a stash of used militaria to deconstruct and remake to their liking. A camo jacket was lined in leopard and cargos were sliced off at the knee, with the cast-off scraps patch-worked into towering boots.One way the industry hasn’t changed enough since the turn of the millennium is in its one-dimensional insistence on uniformly thin models. Dolce and Gabbana clearly have their eyes on the generation that’s coming up. In fact, Gabbana reported enthusiastically that the average age of their shopper post-pandemic is going down. To really engage with that demographic, they could think about a wider range of body types. Sexy comes in all sizes.
25 September 2021
If the last year-and-a-half has made us feel like Nicole Kidman’s children inThe Others, Dolce & Gabbana have just the remedy: “#DGLightTherapy” read their show invitation, a card studded with gems that lit up at the flick of a switch. Stefano Gabbana was a teenager when he first saw the “luminaire” light shows native to the south of Italy during a religious ceremony. The experience stayed with him. “Happiness. Enjoyment. Wow,” he recalled, on the phone from Milan, hours before his and Domenico Dolce’s first runway show with an audience in nearly a year. “Finally, there’s somebody to watch our show!” he laughed. “We love the human touch, watching people during the show, coming out for the finale.”Like fish back in water, the designers had decked out their Metropol runway room like the multicolored cathedrals of lights you’ll find during night-time festivals in the Puglia region and beyond. It felt very welcome-home, and recalled some of the Alta Moda festivities they’ve hosted around Italy over the years. “It’s a very Italian tradition: a celebration of light, family and artisans. This is the most important message for us today,” Gabbana explained. “Light is good therapy for this moment. Now we need to see light, joy and happiness in the eyes of people. That’s what we want.” What the kids want, of course, is archive Dolce & Gabbana. On social media, the feeling for the early 2000s is strong, and the designers are happy to oblige.Interpreting their light therapy in clothes, they encrusted a millennial silhouette (the era, not the generation) with enough crystals to see Swarovski through the pandemic. A denim-on-denim baggy jacket-and-trouser combo had to take you down memory lane, not to mention the petrol-washed or bleached jeans that made for something of a climax for the millennially-inclined. Evolving the roomier tailoring the designers introduced last season (an instant update to their formal tailoring), a soft suit had been hung with multi-colored gems and blazers were naturally made slouchier by the weight of crystals. Even David Gandy’s tight, white trunks from the 2006 Light Blue perfume campaign made an appearance, dusted off with sparkling new diamanté.A T-shirt read “2000s Fashion Moment.” Dolce & Gabbana aren’t afraid of nostalgia. “It’s a way of reminding yourself of something: our roots, our memories, our sentiments,” said Gabbana. “Fashion is not just a piece of fabric.
When we work, we work with a sentiment; with our heart and with our brains. For Domenico and me, it’s our lives. Our collection is pieces of us. We are very sentimental.” In the process, they also revisited the early 1990s, blinging out a hip-hop silhouette that layered mesh tops over white tank tops and re-introduced the half-and-half sports jacket. Is a light-catching oversized glitter suit going to put purpose to your post-pandemic step? It depends on your constitution, but boy will it brighten up your surroundings.
19 June 2021
In their seminal work “Barbie Girl” from 1997, the musical group Aqua sang about a life in plastic: “It’s fantastic.” Pioneers of mid-’90s bubblegum pop, their cartoon revolution coincided with the prevalence of the internet. With lyrics like “imagination, life is your creation,” Aqua’s augmented reality was easily a precursor to social media and its animated digital truths. In 1998, Dolce & Gabbana dressed them for the World Music Awards, marrying the outlandish band with the brand most coveted by the decade’s youth. Nearly 25 years later—in a radical and invigorating change of direction—the designers are now devoting their collections to the e-girl/e-boy tribes of TikTok and its likes.Dressed for the screen, with all the artificial colors, fake textures, and digitally enhanced features you could imagine, it’s a cyber-subculture that lives in the virtual reality Aqua once dreamed of. Those kids certainly look like the band, and so did Dolce & Gabbana’s collection. Something has come full circle. Exaggerated silhouettes forged in kaleidoscopic high-tech materials mimicked the anatomical amplification social media exercises to anime-like degree. Expressed in bionic shapes, some silhouettes evoked the armored bustiers of the spring 2007 collection, itself a superhuman take on the designers’ corseted, black boudoir wardrobe of the ’90s.Speckled with archival memories from that time, the show embraced present-day e-kids’ expressed nostalgia for a fashion era they never experienced, “’90s Supermodel” T-shirts in tow. For years, Gabbana said on a phone call from Milan, young people have been begging the designers to revisit their signature ’90s sexiness. This season, they finally gave in. Said Gabbana: “But the starting point is different. Today ‘sexy’ is the same word but with another value. In the ’90s, you’d dress sexy for other people. Now, the young generations dress sexy for themselves, because they love it. It’s kind of a new hedonism.”In these digital pandemic times, that fact is relentlessly represented in thirsty confinement selfies on social media, shot on camera timers and Facetune-d and filtered beyond the bounds of the human body. Whether or not those ego exercises are solely done for personal gaze is arguable. But for all its youth-centricity, Dolce & Gabbana’s new direction isn’t pandering blindly to the digital generations. “The most important thing about technology is humans. Humans make technology. It’shandmade,” Gabbana said.
His newly Smurf-blue hair—“I had it 25 years ago!”—matched that of Aqua’s mid-’90s Eurodance contemporaries Eiffel 65.
1 March 2021
Two weeks ago, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were planning to show a collection, which called for the physical presence of people from near and far. When travel limitations got in the way, the designers scrapped the idea and redid the whole thing. The transformed Dolce & Gabbana you see on this runway—captured in Milan without an audience—was the result of an exhilarating marathon design process recapped in one word:spontaneity. “Something new?” Gabbana offered on the phone, breaking out in laughter. Spurred by the e-boy/e-girl motif that loosely informed their December couture collections, the designers decided to go all in. The collection was a portrait of the generations growing up on social media, a boundary-breaking global digital community built on spontaneous self-expression.Gabbana was the first to admit that vivid cyber-dressing like the digitalized pop futurism he and Dolce presented today isn’t exactly an expression of his personal wardrobe. Nor are they posting selfies on Instagram, making homemade dance clips for TikTok, or doing whatever you do on Twitch. “I’m not a part of it because I’m 58; I’m not 25. I just look on from the outside. But Domenico and I are very curious about it. The new always comes from the young. Our job is to pay attention to them.” This was an invitation for cross-generational dialogue. “All our assistants are between 20 and 30. Domenico and I, we are the hens,” Gabbana laughed. “All the time, throughout the day, we’re asking them what they think about things, how they would wear it, what they’d think if their girlfriend wore it. We talk a lot.”This season’s youth-quake in the Metropol wasn’t simply an exercise of hip motifs and fabric treatments, but a considered alteration of silhouette that never felt desperate. Gone was the dandy neatness of tapered trousers cut at the ankle and worn with a fancy loafer; in their place, the designers flexed their master tailor skills in an elongated line spontaneously ruched at the hem. Blazers felt roomier. Some even morphed into workwear. It was a good color on Dolce & Gabbana. The freedom of identity the designers see in their young employees reminded them of their own 20s, when subcultural masculinities would defy the conservatism of the 1980s with all the nail varnish, lipstick, and quiffs it took to make a statement. You could trace the parallels in the full faces of makeup that walked the show like something out of an ’80s beauty campaign—but on boys.
(Cover your eyes, Candace Owens!)
1 February 2021
The Milan shows started today, each one with an opening look in a different shade of white. It was as if this city—one of the earliest and hardest hit by the pandemic, though cases are mostly holding steady now—collectively settled on minimalism as the way forward for spring 2021. Then along came Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, who decidedly did not.An Instagram post set the scene for those of us watching from home. The short clip revealed that the Metropol, D&G’s longtime show venue, had been transformed with bright collages of print—runway, walls, benches, and all. The hashtag #DGSicilianPatchwork further spelled out the season’s theme, which the designers elaborated on in a video message. “Given our long experience being inspired by Sicily, we wanted to tell of all that you can find on an island like this, the different cultures that dominated, from the Spanish to the Arabs [to] the Normans,” said Dolce, who was born and raised there. “We’ve treasured everything that they have brought to us,” Gabbana added. “And we put it all together.”The 90-some looks that walked the Metropol runway were less of a lesson in Sicily’s patchwork past than they were a primer in Dolce & Gabbana’s own history, of course. The hourglass dresses and sharply cut jackets pieced together from squares of brocade, chiffon, georgette, and cotton, among other materials, have long numbered among the duo’s can’t-fail silhouettes. No one looking at this collection would mistake the shirred minidress in a mashup of polka dots and florals or the bustiers and bra tops in checkerboard black and white for any label other than D&G. The designers’ command of their signatures is key to their success.In that video recording, Dolce and Gabbana remembered a 1993 show in which they used similar patchworking techniques, only for different ends. That long-ago collection was inspired by the bohemian 1970s, a popular reference in the early ’90s. No hippie flashback, this outing was attuned to the present day. There’s no way around how hard this COVID-19 year has been for fashion brands—from creative leads and CEOs on down to patternmakers and seamstresses. Like their crochet collection of last February—which looks more and more prescient in the rearview mirror—this one puts the emphasis onfatta a mano, on Italian craftsmanship.
“The important thing to us is that each piece is interpreted by skilled hands, one after the other, and in that way each has its own character, its own story, its own passion, its own vision,” said Dolce. “From this comes the uniqueness of each piece.” But this wasn’t just a tribute to the talented craftspeople behind the clothes. In the individual looks and in the collection as a whole there was timely symbolism, a sartorial acknowledgment from a brand that has been charged with cultural insensitivities in its own past, that in this time of global crisis we are stronger together—that this is a moment for unity and bonding, not coming apart. The fact that they messaged this by exploring their own heritage only makes it more potent. As for the long dresses of many colors and prints at the end of the show? Hope and optimism aplenty.
23 September 2020
“I don’t like the ‘digital show’ solution,” said Domenico Dolce. “The fashion show cannot be substituted with something on a screen. You need the physical contact, the human connection. Because fashion begins with people.”“We did a ‘virtual’ Alta Moda show last month,” added Stefano Gabbana. “But without an audience it was not the same thing. It lost its essence.”To regain that essence for this spring 2021 menswear show, the designers had to adapt. Their long-standing venue, the Metropole theater, is not currently fit for purpose: COVID-19 makes any mass indoor lingering unpalatable. Therefore we decamped 30 minutes south of Milan’s center to the garden campus of Humanitas University, the educational arm of the privately funded—but public-treating—medical group for which Dolce & Gabbana has been funding medical scholarships since 2019. In February of this year—before COVID-19 was first detected in Italy—the designers donated further to Humanitas’s since fruitful research into the body’s immune response to the coronavirus. Twenty-twenty’s graduating students have just learned that they will be able to celebrate their matriculation—the moment at which they become doctors—with real, not virtual ceremonies this summer, and some of them were among the 260 temperature-checked and masked guests here.What the soon-to-be doctors diagnosed in Dolce & Gabbana this evening is unknown, but from my very spacious bench—“They’ll never be able to squeeze us together like sardines again!” observed my neighbor from a meter away—it looked liked like a serious case of creative development. In their preshow briefing (also spacious) the designers said they had worked with the owners of the Parco dei Principi hotel in Sorrento to infuse elements of Gio Ponti’s architectural wonder into their collection. There were plenty of straightforwardly cosmetic connections made; the beautiful blue tiling patterns in the hotel were handsome additions to silk sarongs, a rib-knit “wetsuit” (modeled with a hilariously small surfboard), dressing gowns, pants, and shirting. More complex was its reproduction in fully proportioned knit sweaters, or different-wash patchwork on jeans.Ponti’s hotel was not a new structure, but something built around a preexisting 17th-century building that was also designed to blend into its Mediterranean context, hence all that blue tiling.
Today, Dolce & Gabbana built something new about the preexisting architecture of tailoring, proposing broad back-pleated pants as the foundation for slim jackets shaped around pin tuck seams. They also worked on some fun hybrid pieces including a bold sweatpant-jean splice and a lovely full-shoulder jacket in differently shaded and textured sections of blue leather.“These are not simple clothes—they’re complicated!” Gabbana had archly observed beforehand. And they were. This complication was not without purpose, however. For one thing, it looked good. And along with the venue we were in, the legacy of Ponti, and the selection of foods from across Italy prepared by chef Gennaro Esposito, they were products of Italian culture and excellence—all showcased with pride in front of an audience whose passion was tangible.
15 July 2020
Following a tumultuous weekend dominated by coronavirus panic, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana finished Milan on a grace note, with a celebration of the artisans they depend upon to make so many of their clothes. Black-and-white videos ofil calzolaio(the shoemaker),la sarta(the seamstress),la magliaia(the knitter),la tessitrice(the weaver),la cravattaia(the tie maker), and more played on video screens, and in the Metropol’s foyerartigianisat at work benches and posed with guests. “It’s very Italian, like the menswear,” Gabbana said of the collection in a preview. “It’s a tribute through our eyes to tradition.”One way or another, Italian tradition is what Dolce and Gabbana are always celebrating, but this collection had a sweeter affect than usual for all its handcrafts. The designers described sending out their sketches to home knitters and crocheters all over Italy and being stunned by the finesse with which their designs were realized. Pointing to the curving waist and hips of a crochet bra and briefs, Dolce said, “It’s not like cutting fabric with scissors.” He continued: “This was a beautiful experiment for the whole company, these knitters were teaching us.”This embrace of artisanship is reverberating across fashion. It’s a reaction as much to our turbulent (dystopian?) times as to our tech addictions. “Obviously we love sexy,” Gabbana said, “but it felt too aggressive in this moment. We wanted to take life in a more soft way, more intimate.” And so, bejeweled satin evening sandals shared the runway with hand-knit house slippers, and the easy-wearing house robe was reinterpreted in a myriad of ways: in crochet, in a lofty shearling lookalike that was actually a knit, and in an ultra-soft menswear alpaca whose oversized proportions were lifted from a circa-late-1980s Dolce & Gabbana menswear show. Those look like more innocent times, don’t they?At 121 looks—and five Amy Winehouse songs—this collection was heavy on knits. The structured retort to all the softness was the menswear tailoring. Dolce and Gabbana are always keepingil sartoandla sartabusy; the difference this season was how boyish the tailoring was, a sensibility accentuated by the newsboy caps and ties that accompanied many of the looks. In the end, though, the push and pull of masculine and feminine tipped in the femme’s direction. Even still, thanks to its artisanal origins this was a surprisingly and refreshingly gentle Dolce & Gabbana collection.
Credit to both of them for somehow intuiting that it was just what we needed.
23 February 2020
In 2009 Dolce & Gabbana became the first house to put “bloggers” (how quaint that word sounds now) in its front row—and even provided them with laptops. Then in 2015 the house invited a new wave of Insta/YouTube influencers led by Cameron Dallas. Today the dog-year clock of digital influence chimed again as Dolce & Gabbana threw open its doors to a house dressed bunch of wide-eyed and good-spirited Tik Tokers, many of whom were barely out of diapers when the first wave of bloggers (now well-established industry veterans) landed on Viale Piave. After this show, which was closed by a guy in a full look of tufted white knitwear who carried a beautiful little lamb from a farm just outside town, I asked some of these fresh arrivals how they’d liked their first ever show. “It was amazing!” came the answer in unison. And could this ancient, analogue form of fashion presentation translate to their hot-right-now platform? “Definitely!” Awww: they were nearly as cute as that lamb.Call it artisanal influencing: Dolce & Gabbana has now passed down their first experience of front row fashion to three micro-generations of platform-defined digital denizens. This was only an aside to the collection but tangentially relevant to it. The show was named “The masters of art” and explored the dignity of labor, the value of craft, and the preciousness of skills that are handed down from generation to generation. In the foyer of the Metropol there were tailors, knitters, and shoemakers from Dolce’s staff doing their thing and stoutly ignoring the phones pointed their way. Around the runway was projected a grainy video of mostly Sicilian rural artisans carrying out their various family trades: basket-weaving, pasta making, carpentry, shepherding, weaving, barbering and more.Before the show, Domenico Dolce took care to ensure certain garments bore the (albeit artificial) marks of hard labor. Taking a break from twisting and battering a pair of waxed and over-dyed taupe work trousers with the help of an assistant, he said: “For me it isn’t about fashion, it’s about style and identity, and this is something real that grows out of culture.” Stefano Gabbana added: “We want to show the new generation the beauty of these old jobs that have been passed from father to son and also to reflect that beauty in the collection.” This they did sometimes very literally.
Certain models were dressed as handsome itinerant tradesmen—a florist, a watch-repairer, an artist, a shepherd (complete with crook and majorly shaggy sheepskin pants) and even an electrician. Around these literal landmarks came an onrush of artistically rendered interpretations of workwear, ruralwear, and businesswear (often punctuated by sling- and chain-borne bags).The best pieces took the functional and agrarian inspirations behind the collection—the pockets, the hook and eyes, the volume—and used roughed vintage effect fabrics including pied-de-poule and tweeds to reimagine pre-mechanized workwear for a post-mechanized consumer. The wide whale corduroy pants (with treated technical buttoned combat pockets) in black or khaki that tightened dramatically from wide to narrow on their way down would have looked equally good tucked into the boots of a 19th-century kid or a 21st-century one.As labors go this was a double-shift (116 looks in total) long enough to be soundtracked with five ’80s Italian songs—deep and soulful—by Franco Battiato and others. They only added to a from-the-heart show that felt authentically and unapologetically all-Italian and all-Dolce & Gabbana in both presentation and content, bar only a few concessionary subtitles added to acknowledge wider trends (the belted tailored jackets) and the international and newly Tik Tok-powered audience.
11 January 2020
There was no mistaking Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s theme this season. Their Metropol show space was kitted out in giant palms and the runway was carpeted in leopard print. We were in the jungle. “The Sicilian jungle,” Gabbana clarified. “We enjoy making something glamorous, and we love the sense of happiness, summertime. It’s our philosophy.”Over the course of 124 looks, the designers touched on all the elements of their chosen theme and then some, starting with safari suiting (minus the pinup girl patches of their recent men’s collection, which covered the same territory) and cycling through animal and tropical prints, scarf dressing, and resortwear designed for lounging poolside but absolutely too special to actually swim in. The jungle has been a big topic of this Milan season—everyone from Giorgio Armani to Donatella Versace has weighed in. Where Dolce & Gabbana’s collection stands apart is in the extraordinary craftsmanship on display. Apparently the raffia pieces from the June menswear show were so successful with clients they redoubled their efforts here. Crocheted, woven, or embellished with crystals, they were surprisingly soft to the touch, not at all scratchy as might be expected. Just as supple, if not more so, was a crocodile skirtsuit, the pieces of which were constructed like a puzzle or a mosaic with virtually undetectable seams. This was Alta Moda–level stuff. Elsewhere there were Instagram-friendly nods to the now—aspirational stuff for their youngest fans—such as the very tiny bags that accessorized many of the looks and the leopard spots in the shape ofDs andGs.Interspersed throughout the collection were quite a few little black dresses, a welcome antidote to the excess of jungle references—not that D&G’s clients have anything against excess. “Very DNA,” Gabbana declared of these, and “a little bit ’90s—our archive.” He came across a vintage Dolce & Gabbana LBD on 1stdibs selling for $8,000 and was stunned. “This is why we make again black sexy things,” he said. That’s another theme that has come up this week: owning your own heritage. Who does that better than these guys?
22 September 2019
Enola Gay-era, Victory Girl style pin-up girls—all pneumatic curve and pout—were patched into the opening section of reimagined explorer wear meets Pacific theater khakis or reproduced on some of the many, many silk print camp collar shirts here. The come-hither messages written above them included “Looking Forward,” “Chill & Love,” “Only Good Vibes,” and “Choose Me.” Over the Metropol theater’s pumping sound system an extended remix of Takagi & Ketra’s Jambo saw OMI repeat the lyric “we can do what we want, we can do what we want,” over and over.This season Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana wanted to mix a moreish menswear cocktail that packed as much potent tropical punch as the most OTT tiki bar you can barely remember remembering the morning after. As Stefano Gabbana said pre-show, “the most important thing today is this tropical mood, seen through our Sicilian eyes. What we’ve done is to take elements from the ’40s and ’50s, and Elvis, then a little from the ’80’s—Spandau Ballet—and something from the ’90s too. Then we add references from our own archive and shake it all up to maybe make something new.”The resurrection of Dolce & Gabbana archival pieces included a loose armed, high-waisted, two top-cut pocketed leather jacket from 1991 (look 57) that came in a direct reproduction of the original and variations painted with those quivering pin-ups. There was also a seriously Sicilian middle section of tight, tight knit tees and shirts plus some loose perforated knit pieces that featured tropical patchwork. These were played against house-standard caps and leather shoes that boasted more embellishments than a presidential tweet. There were also plenty of attractive pajamas, dressing gowns, and pareos featuring southern Italian ceramic prints, and baroquely brocaded pinstripe topcoats and jackets.This was all core house fare. Just as in recent years climate change has allowed Sicilian farmers to begin the cultivation of paw-paw, finger limes, mango, avocado, and other tropical fruit, here Dolce & Gabbana broadened the scope of its decorative cultivation to introduce a riotous Macedonia (that’s Italian for fruit salad) of non-native fare. Watermelon, bananas, pineapple, and more were slung from succulent tropical leaves in a very lingering exploration of extravagant equatorial graphics: Club Tropicana meets Paradise, Hawaiian Style.
Leopard print—usually here a reference first and foremost to Lampedusa’s novel, though always used to the utmost for its animalistically sensual implication—was today more literally jungle-sourced and placed against tiger stripe both as runway pattern and on more silk pieces, sometimes cut against the fruit and foliage prints. Leopard also featured on a semi-sheer, super-volumized duster trench—that twist of the ’80s—which was also presented in khaki and black that came cut in a super-light micro ripstop and a layered tropical print organza.This was a collection packed full of mashed up masculine stereotype from eras now seen as hopelessly pre-woke (which they were) but that also—in the case of those pin-ups, or the wahinis in Elvis Hawaii movies—offered a gentler variety of mass-culture gender objectification than that abroad today. The print of a sports roadster on silk shirts, shorts, swimming briefs, and suits as well as the lace sports uniforms—golf, soccer, rugby, boxing and baseball—were similarly ironically undercut ‘man’s man’ costume options for fantasy island days and nights.
15 June 2019
Today’s Dolce & Gabbana show opened with a black-and-white video of the designers and their studio assistants sketching, draping, and fitting models in looks from the collection that would walk the runway minutes later.Fatto a manowas stitched across the bodice of one of the dresses: “Made by hand.” In a year in which the designers have struggled to find the right tone, the video portrayed a team of dedicated makers working hard and enjoying what they do.Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana named the collection Eleganza and enlisted a master of ceremonies to narrate the 127-look march past. It was divided into a dozen or so sections, each one representative of one of the signatures the designers have developed over the past 36 years: men’s tailoring, leopard print, brocade, sequins, women’s tailoring in menswear fabrics, et cetera. In recent years, their practice has been to put a seasonal gloss on those trademarks. Italy’s world-famous cuisine one season, its tourist destinations another, or the opera. This season the device was that MC. Haute couture shows of old were accompanied by stately voiced descriptions; this was a tongue-in-cheek take on a method of presentation that had mostly passed out of fashion by the time Dolce and Gabbana started working. It was definitely never this camp: “Enough of the atelier,” the MC declared. “Run to the boutique!” Though it was designed with the same intention as the opening video—to underscore the duo’s seriousness and sincerity—it lacked some of the wit necessary to keep it engaging. In 2019, not all women dream of being princesses or whisked away for a 365-hour shopping spree by a man. Some would like to be whisked away by another woman, and some are happy to pay for their purchases themselves.That said, for the Dolce & Gabbana client, this was a winning show—a full day-to-night wardrobe of time-tested looks, minus the athleisure, streetwear, and influencer front row that they had lately taken on board in a bid at currency. In a preview, the designers said that the young celebrities they’ve been dressing, the men especially, have been turned on by sartorialism—some of these guys had never worn a suit before their first Dolce & Gabbana fitting. They’re advocating for a similar “return to classicality” on the women’s side.As familiar as it looked from a distance, seen in close-up there were new techniques here.
In the flower section, for example, some of the prints weren’t prints at all but heat transfers of individual blooms with glossy surfaces, which mixed with three-dimensional fabric and raffia flowers on full-skirted dresses and more fitted, sexy ones. They also got playful with patternmaking on a pair of dresses that were spliced together from separate 1940s and 1980s silhouettes. It was satisfying to see the designers engage in experimentation, even on this small scale. There’s security in classics, but it’s risks that will make Dolce & Gabbana vital going forward.
24 February 2019
“Dressed up like a million dollar trooper / Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper. Puttin’ on the ritz.” Irving Berlin’s lyric, played as we trooped out of this 28-minute, 130-ish-look show, was a fitting full stop for a collection that leant lovingly on a 100-year-old paradigm of masculine elegance.That paradigm—an elegant, tailored, 20th-century perhaps-gentleman of leisure—came sometimes heavily accented by Dolce & Gabbana’s own heritage of menswear expression. So there was a section of wide-wale corduroy suiting teamed with flat caps and brown leather outerwear that harked back to the label’s earliest Sicilian-inspired collections. And the eye-melting section—actually, there were two of these sections—that pulsed with metallic brocade and jacquard suiting whose patterns were taken from the decorative Byzantine frescoes in Venice, Rome, and Monreale was very D&G.A great deal of this collection, however, bore a less heavily stamped house signature and instead took time to explore, luxuriate in, and subtly update archetypical tropes of masculine dressing from the interwar years. The whole vibe was back-to-analog. At the end of the stage, company tailoring workers gave fittings and made alterations. A finely spoken English master of ceremonies provided a running commentary of each section—sometimes reverting to serviceable Italian—just as you imagine the first menswear shows at Pitti in the 1950s would have been narrated on the newsreels.Opening black and white sections presented a distinctly late-1920s to 1930s silhouette of strong shouldered short jackets and straight-legged wide pants, which were updated—and slightly 1990s-ified—via a heavy break at the leg. A passing cluster of heavily pomaded models in silk pajama suits printed with fountain pens or umbrellas (which along with ornately handled swagger sticks featured heavily as accessories) presented the notion of this man as a collector and aesthete. A new D&G logo in Art Deco font that resembled the personal monogram of some Rockefeller or Mellon from way back when featured on country-club knits above tweed check pants in the same high-waisted wide shape, but worn for the sake of contemporaneousness with sneakers instead of saddle shoes. That was not the only nod to now—there was a cool tracksuit in a check Bogie would have loved worn harmoniously beneath a raglan shouldered herringbone overcoat, but really these were few and far between.
So why go old-school glitz in 2019? Stefano Gabbana said: “We love today because of the freedom: Everybody feels free to dress in whatever and however they want. But we wanted to explore this style of elegance now, because it gives young men of today the opportunity to enjoy fashion in a way that is new for them. We have lost this sense of elegance recently—fashion is the mirror of the time—and of course we do sportswear and mix and match too. But we’ve found that a lot of the guys we have worked recently with get very excited at the prospect of wearing an amazing suit or a tuxedo—a really strong suit or a tuxedo, not something boring—because that is not something that is so available to them. And this kind of elegance is timeless.” All this show lacked was Lauren Bacall leaning against a piano.
12 January 2019
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have found their true calling in fashion: making people feel good about themselves. Smiles were worn runway-side—that’s unusual enough—at their celebratory show about the okay-ness of identity. “Each one of us is the king or queen of our own lives!” Dolce declared. Meaning, each of us is the sole owner of a unique cluster of genes—and why not celebrate that? The theme of this season’s show was DNA—the designers’ own fingerprints were projected on screens behind the audience. There were more than 150 looks (perhaps this is turning into an Italian inter-brand contest, after Riccardo Tisci’s Burberry score of 134 and Emporio Armani showing more than 170).Still, size of show is less important than its emotional impact. In this case, it was an individual thing, huge fun for all, as you saw the person you were thrilled to see again or for the first time, each one decked out in one of the house codes. Monica Bellucci in a black-and-white polka dot dress. Carla Bruni in a baroque gold and silver three-piece trouser suit. Isabella Rossellini in black lace tailoring, with her daughter, Elettra, and her grandchild. Let’s not overlook Helena Christensen, Eva Herzigova, Marpessa Hennink, and—cue hoorays all round—Ashley Graham in leopard print. In a new turn of events—street casting broadening the perspective—queer identities were also whooped up, with women walking hand in hand and gender nonbinary people represented, taking the runway alongside grandmothers, daughters, sisters, and children.Ultimately? There were some extraordinary clothes, especially the densely elaborate, embroidered tailored jackets that Dolce & Gabbana does so well. The designers also showed their equally impressive ability to frame traditional notions of femininity in all-out printed flouncy frocks and, quite the opposite, a canon of curvaceous black dressing.Though the show was still staged in traditional runway style at the designers’ own Metropol theater building, there was a sense of social change going on here. Ultimately, it felt like a hybrid of the Italian passeggiata, where people of all generations stroll, dressed to the hilt, displaying themselves to neighbors on summer evenings and—at the beginning—a Catholic church procession. In other words: just like Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana themselves—unique.
23 September 2018
We are living in a millennial world and Dolce & Gabbana have spent the last few seasons exploring just that, with Instagram-cast shows featuring demographically specific influencers and Euro-aristos aplenty. “Now it’s time to turn a new page,” said Domenico Dolce pre-show. “We’ve been exploring sportswear, the new attitude, and learning a lot. . . .”“And one big thing we have learned,” interjected Gabbana, “is that what the new generation wants from us most is our classics. We saw it in all the fittings. The perfectly tailored suits, the tuxedos, the black lace, the silk print dresses—the things we made that excited us 30 years ago are exciting young customers today. They want to make these things that are our own, their own. Really, we don’t work in fashion. Our job is to use the collections to talk about our story, and what we talk about is style.”Thus this season they embarked on a 144-look runway education program: a crammer-course, degree-level education in all things Dolce & Gabbana. This collection was called DNA Evolution, and its invitation, also posted online, was preshow homework: a video dedicated to classifying the elements that make up their brand. Made up of 10 categories, and a further 40 oppositions, these included “velvet vs. brocade,” “sacred vs. profane,” “erotic vs. Catholic,” and “pasta vs. tomato.”On the runway remained a few members of D&G’s millennial diaspora; Cameron Dallas, Elias Becker (son of Boris), Wizkid, Nash Grier, Nam Joo Hyuk, and Maharaja Padmanabh Singh among them. But to widen the lens and set up the lesson were some influencers of a different vintage: Paul Coster, Adam Senn, and Evandro Soldati. Plus . . . Naomi! Marpessa! Monica Bellucci! Around these landmark fashion individuals were arranged an agency cast of proper model-models and a street-cast ensemble of families, friends, and couples. With the exception of last womenswear season’s bag-toting drones almost every runway trick the designers have ever pulled was reprised for this show.To be truthful, there was way too much course work on this epic survey and reset of 34 years’ worth of house codes to digest in a single sitting. Between Dallas’s opening gilded jacket and crown and Campbell’s closing pin-striped suit and fedora came a multigenerational, multi-ethnic survey of three decades of shifting menswear through Dolce & Gabbana’s particular prism.
Tailoring-wise, Adam Senn walked in a classic black suit alongside Adriana Cernanova similarly attired, while Marpessa wore a Sicilian workingman’s suit, reminiscent of her earliest campaigns for the brands in the ’80s, and Nam Joo Hyuk received a three-piecer that was as opulently baroque as the backdrop. Streetwear, meanwhile, was not reserved for the younger models: Coster—“We have been shooting with him since 25 years!” said Gabbana backstage—was dressed in a recent-vintage Dolce-style patched parka and jacquard baseball tracksuit over sneakers, while a group of four street-cast Milannonnaswore a suite of tracksuits so loud they looked like a Dolce-attired Beastie Boys tribute act.
16 June 2018
Mass marketing took on a holy new dimension in the Catholic ceremony Dolce & Gabbana staged today. The set facade was an homage to the baroque Oratorio di Santa Cita church in Palermo, Sicily—the island of Domenico Dolce’s birth. After an interminable wait for the show to begin, the gilded altar gates finally swung open on a revelation. A procession of eight drones appeared, each carrying a Dolce & Gabbana handbag. On top of each device—visible for just a moment against the background in silhouette—there appeared to hover a Communion Host. Live-streaming and social media kicked in. The drones bobbed up and down, genuflecting to the crowd. Preempting all hell being let loose, the words on the first model’s look werefashion sinner.The designers called this their Fashion Devotion collection. It was made of everything from exquisitely crafted Vatican City vestment brocades, cut velvet (green, cardinal red, Venetian pink), and sumptuous embroidery all the way down to cheap, profane slogans on sweatshirts and T-shirts appropriated from the aesthetics of the souvenir stall.Offended? To be honest, the Catholic church was the original marketer to millions before anyone else, depicting the gilded, artistic glories of faith and power to illiterate masses while turning a blind eye to the hawking of devotional trinkets and fake saint’s relics. And that was in medieval times.Before anyone goes off the deep end about religious sacrilege, we can state this about Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana: In the era of identity politics, the designers sincerely identify as Italian Catholics, as well as gay people. “I have been to church before each show,” Gabbana attested, although he indicated that he deliberately stands at the back and stops his ears to sermons and dogma. “It’s just for me. But, you know, I do believe in God, and I believe in the Virgin. It’s only for me.” Cutting out the middleman in the conversation with the Almighty is the thing of today.Toward the finale of this broad fashion-church collection, there was a girl who walked in a black suit, wearing a clerical-collared shirt beneath. She was surely a humorous note. The first time Dolce and Gabbana met was in the dressed-up mid-’80s, at a Milan nightclub. Gabbana was a hopeful, looking for advice from Dolce, who was already a working designer. “But how will I know you?” Gabbana asked beforehand, on the phone. “Don’t worry: Look for the one dressed like a priest,” Dolce replied.
25 February 2018
This collection was entitled King’s Angels. Thanks to serendipity (and a beauty contract), the King of the North happened to be at the show. So what would he think? A suggestion that Jon Snow might be into the brown long-hair shearling worn by Roberto Rossellini didn’t stick. But when he spotted the look sported by Luke Shield—a black mid-length shearling, a black brocaded suit, and a rakish wide-brimmed hat—Kit Harington issued his decree: “That’smy outfit!”This was another millennials show in which scion sons of famous families, and some who have made their own fame, walked the Metropol runway, many of them wearing crowns. It opened with a long filmed montage identifying them before the curtain rose to reveal a mise-en-scène of five opening looks worn in front of a putti-inlaid marble ballroom backdrop. Christian Combs, Austin Mahone, and Cameron Dallas got walking in a series of gold-brocaded tailcoats over slim pin-striped pants: dynastic gear as imagined by Dolce & Gabbana.As the collection unfolded so the menswear genres and periods the designers drew from broadened. There was significant showing of closely fitted large-lapel suits in colors that ran from pink, lilac, and green to Harington’s favorite all black, and came either brocaded, pin-striped, and embroidered, or all three. Frogged velvet jackets were teamed with silk jacquard pants and jeweled slippers. A red brocade suit was worn under an overcoat of ripped-up and refashioned denim jeans. Tracksuits in velvet or silk jersey were heaped with collaged embroideries of heraldry, sequined shorts were worn with oversize collegiate-striped and embroidered sweatshirts, and a ceramic-floral bomber jacket was topped by a backpack fashioned to resemble a golden angel.By the time the Colombian performer Maluma came on wearing a gold sequin suit to sing a couple of numbers for the finale, the nonstop mix-and-match, maximalist opulence of this collection overwhelmed: There was just so much in it and of it to try and take in. These were raiments as much as garments—competitively street regal and unstintingly extravagant. Fall/Winter is coming.
13 January 2018
Today’s Dolce & Gabbana runway show was the designers’ second in less than 24 hours. Last night, they staged a not-so-secret “secret show” of their latest evening looks on a cast of mostly millennial sons and daughters for a crowd of mostly clients, at least two of them wearing the light-up tiaras from the label’s last Spring show. If customers are flying in from all around the world for their #DG fix, why not give them more of what they came for? This afternoon, the millennials were arrayed in the front row for a collection that took love as its theme. “Queen of Hearts,” the designers called it.Love is an expansive topic. Gabbana admitted as much beforehand, saying, “You can find love wherever.” And find it they did (in the Queen of Hearts). Many of the more elaborately embellished pieces borrowed the regalia and finery of the face cards found in a 52-card deck, in fruit and vegetable prints—who among us doesn’t love to eat?—in cherubim prints (naturally), and in the revival of the lingerie-exposing hourglass wiggle dresses and corseted tailoring with which the designers began making their mark more than 30 years ago. It was a week of anniversaries here in Milan—at Versace, at Missoni—so Dolce & Gabbana’s reckoning with the past felt timely.The collection’s virtue was in its variety. But by positioning the Instagram generation on the sidelines and returning to a straightforward model cast, the show lost some of the heart of the duo’s most recent runway outing, where they invited twentysomethings and plenty of other real-life people to enjoy their own runway experiences. There were tears all around at that show in February; it was a regular love fest. At last night’s “secret show,” Gabbana said, “I think this is the moment for fashion—this is my opinion—to change something, to go to the customers.” They did that yesterday, and they’ll do it next month when they take another new Alta Moda collection to Tokyo. But prêt-à-porter is the brand’s biggest platform. They should keep rethinking and renewing the model.
24 September 2017
#Boycott Dolce & Gabbana? Oh no, not again. What had Domenico and Stefano said now? Some of the runway walkers and all of the backstage staff, plus the designers themselves, wore T-shirts urging a boycott of the brand.“It’s irony! A joke!” Dolce said backstage before the show. “People use heavy words very easily these days. There is too much aggression. We think what the world needs is love—and for us, fashion is love.”Irony number two was that this show was more roadblock than boycott. Outside the Metropol there were several hundred highly hormonal girls of a certain age waiting to see whichever member of this hundred-plus cast of hot Insta-famous boys—seasoned by a dusting of hot, Insta-famous girls—they were into. (As I write this paragraph in a cafe around the corner, a high wave of ecstatic teenage screaming is echoing up the street). For following last night's last-minute sartorial Dolce & Gabbana show (“that was was our DNA, our classics, what we have always done, while this is about the new,” Dolce said), the designers again returned to their crowd-drawing, social media–led policy of casting millennials.There was plenty of second-generation famous, including Dylan Brosnan (son of Pierce), Brandon Lee (son of Tommy and Pamela), Tyler Clinton (nephew of Bill), Myles O’Neal (son of Shaquille), Sacha Bailey (son of David), Roberto Rossellini (son of Isabella), and Tuki Brando (grandson of Marlon). Among the girls included a Greek princess and a cluster of Stallones, and there were self-made selfie-natives in the form of Italian musician Tedua and American artist Raury Deshawn Tullis. The house handed out a cheat sheet listing many of these names alongside their Instagram handles and follower count.Raury (@raury, 149K) wore yellow jersey shorts and an oversize yellow hoodie, both printed with a Dolce & Gabbana label. Over this he wore a transparent bomber that, he said, “feels like it’s from the future. It’s technical and it’s about protection. I like it.” Raury, like all the models, had been encouraged to choose his own outfit, but at the finale he seemed to tire of it, pulling off the hoodie and the bomber. “PROTEST” read the block capitals on his chest, along with “D&G GIVE ME FREEDOM” and “I AM NOT YOUR SCAPEGOAT.” Ah, the irony.
17 June 2017
There were mothers, daughters, sisters, brothers, boyfriends, girlfriends, toddlers, and babes-in-arms; a tribe of international millennials, members of European royal families, and so many generations of music, acting, and celebrity dynasties that a seventeen-page identification document was distributed to the press before the show. Well, you know it already. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana just pulled off what must rank as fashion’s biggest audience–participation coup ever: a show involving over 140 people of many shapes, ethnicities, and ages—each of them dressed to the nines in clothes they had picked out and accessorized themselves over days and nights of fittings. “The character of people is the important thing to us,” declared Stefano Gabbana. “We’ve had an attraction to this from the very beginning—our first show in the mid-1980s was on real people. The message is: You need to accept yourself as you are. That’s it!”It’s plain that no designer could marshal this kind of immensely enjoyed production simply by applying a cold corporate strategy. The designers are indeed clever businessmen. But there’s a sense that this show was only possible because it grew naturally out of the human relationships they’ve forged while hosting their Alta Moda summer trips around Italy over the last few years. They delight in displaying Italian sociability—the food, fun, the dancing, the eternal respect for the Mama—almost as much as they do the clothes. Crucial to this is Domenico Dolce’s skill and delight in cutting and altering clothes for each person to make them feel fantastic. All these factors—the relationships and the memories—conspire to make couture customers fantastically relaxed about buying Dolce & Gabbana clothing. Added to that, Stefano Gabbana’s instinct for social media has fueled the youth-connectedness. Millennials have been walking their ready-to-wear runways for a while.In terms of clothes, there is something in the Dolce & Gabbana repertoire in which almost everyone can feel at home. That is a glorious achievement—something deeper and more enduring than any seasonal novelty.
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26 February 2017
“Seeing that made me feel old for the first time,” said the editor in chief of ItalianGQ, Emanuele Farneti, as we stumbled out the door at Dolce & Gabbana today. You and me both, brother. For Fall ’17, Dolce & Gabbana took the idea of inviting YouTube and Instagram influencers from the millennial generation to their show, started by them last season, by inviting them tobethe show. But they weren’t only chasing models with fat follower portfolios; there were children of clients at the Alta Moda couture line in the mix, too.Cameron Dallas, who, as usual, brought several hundred hopelessly devoted young female fans in his wake, opened the show in a black and burgundy suit as Austin Mahone, also suited, wielded a golden microphone on the runway. Brandon Thomas Lee wore an oversize down jacket with patches of brocade over a pajama suit. Rafferty Law wore patched denim, Luka Sabbat wore a suit—Domenico Dolce said many of his choose-it-yourself models had surprised him by opting for tailoring—with a shirt open wide enough to display his chains, and Presley Gerber went for a red velvet jacket with guard embroideries. Tinie Tempah’s golden and blue floral jacquard suit was awesome.Still, they kept coming: Diggy Simmons, Neels Visser, Chase Hill, Chen Xue Dong, and Sergio Carvajal in a collection that speedily became pretty bananas. Weibo fashion critic Gogoboi wore a faux-leopard-fur oversize bomber that came with a carnival prize stuffed leopard head at the hood; there were also polar bear and dog versions. Regal canines—including a great snob fox in a smoking jacket shown on one velvet sweatshirt worn over brocade patch jeans—were a theme. Sneakers were dipped in resin, given elegant brand signature, or scribbled and sketched on in a teen-dream mosaic like those covering the backpacks of the Cameron Dallas fans screaming in the freezing cold outside.Sofia Richie led a female cast that included Sistine and Sophia Stallone; Sonia Ben Ammar; Lucky Blue Smith’s fantastic sisters, Pyper America, Starlie Cheyenne, and Daisy Clementine; as well as Imogen Waterhouse; Lori Harvey; and client model Yumi Dondo. All wore lingerie. Usually, talking about those who walk in a collection more than the clothes seen in it seems wrong; here it was the point. As Stefano Gabbana, who threw his first fashion show at age 19, said backstage, this was Dolce & Gabbana’s exercise in generational collaboration: “These guys are representative of millions of young people.
We are not so young anymore. So it’s very interesting for us to try to understand what they love and don’t love.” Luka Sabbat confirmed he and his fellow models wore only what they wanted: “I wouldn’t do this, otherwise.” At the end, the protagonists in a collection called the DG Princes (they should have added princesses for parity) marched back out a happy hubbub. Then we old geezers shuffled out past the Cameron Dallas fans looking hopefully over our shoulders.
14 January 2017
TheDolce & GabbanaSpring ready-to-wear show was a good vantage point for observing how the old-fashioned runway system is being questioned—pushed by digital technology to the brink of falling apart. Stefano Gabbana is the social media–savvy, fast-reacting, hilariously self-mocking one on Instagram (brave his in-underpants exercise videos if you dare); Domenico Dolce is the hands-on tailor-couturier with a huge Southern Italian heritage behind him. At one and the same time, these two were some of the first enthusiasts of the changing media (live-streaming, bloggers front row), while also becoming pioneers of the long, slow, excessively luxuriant “experiential” travel habit, which has now taken over the summer schedule.If you whittle all that down, these guys have been Italian fashion’s best advocates for bringing the outside in—and these days, thanks to the invention of the cell phone camera, all that life, detail, movement, history, and exuberance can be captured, shared, pored over, and treasured by all. With their Spring collection, they brought in 20 “millennials,” from Lucky Blue Smith and his sisters to Luka Sabbat andCameron Dallas. They also put on an energetic, democratic kids’ performance—street dancers, up from Naples, who occupied the runway, in their own clothes with their wild fusion of hip-hop and the ancient bloodline heritage of the Neapolitan tarantella.What the young, flown-in audience saw on the runway—from the light-up heels to the multiple varieties of Alice-band headdresses (tiaras, turbans, piles of fruit)—was calculated, of course, to connect with trophy-hunting kids on a budget. Also for them, the D&G logo T-shirts, an ironic reappropriation of the market-stall fakes. Pretty clever move, in the context of the cultural soup Vetements and others are swimming in.Nevertheless, this was a traditional show. After the real dancers, came the models, walking single file, not much smiling. What they wore demonstrated all of the values of this Italianate house, the printed sundresses (pasta, seafood, gelato, if you will), and the incredible embellishment of the sequined, toy soldier glittering military jackets.Still, all this and more was placed within the context of an old-world catwalk. Will these edgy, emotionally intelligent designers want to be the first in Milan to break free of that?
25 September 2016
The place was a club called No Ties, the time was eons back in the mists of history (okay, the early 1980s), and the occasion was the first timeDomenico Dolceever metStefano Gabbana. So, do the designers remember what the DJ was playing at the very moment they first locked eyes? “Sì! ‘Africa’ by Toto,” said Domenico Dolce, before presenting a collection that majored on a hard-to-resist medley of musical influence that featured some finely designed new-silhouette pieces and which was—as per—powerfully dosed with this label’s house-special blend of in-your-face Italianate pizzazz.If "Africa" provided the musical amber that keeps Dolce and Gabbana’s first encounter forever pristine in their memory, today’s was delivered by The Hot Sardines. This New York jazz ensemble’s powerfully-tonsiled chanteuse Elizabeth Bougerol had all but the most blasé menswear followers nodding and applauding in between numbers. After two warm-up tunes, one with the intro line of “Boys, boys, boys” signaled the arrival of Presley Gerber in a lean and long-bodied black suit on a checked runway lined with ornate palm tree lanterns: the set was a sort of Jazz Age Sicilian speakeasy. Next up, post-Presley, was Rafferty Law in a saxophone-print bomber and shirt with cavalry flashed pants. These two members of the designers’ seminal-millennial guest list had been promoted from front row to center-stage, and they made fine front men.As this almost 100-look collection unfolded it became clear this was a multi-genre ode to music and musicianship played out in cloth. The great boom box bags reflected the oversize street-sport shapes of linen silk pants, tees, and sweats painted in faux-naïf nightclub vignettes or sequined and patched with designer themed band patches. A gold jacquard palm tree evening jacket or a patched military majordomo outfit could have come from a ’50s swing band stage. Patched black leather jackets were hard rock, multicolored leather blousons with collegiate detail more soft rock. Like the selfie-snapping sexy tourists in the last womenswear campaign, many of these looks came accessorized with headphones and phone cases whose various motifs—from sequined cassette tapes to saxophones—were in tune with the rest. Single-letter alphabet rings spelled out D-A-N-C-E or L-O-V-E on the wearers’ knuckles.
Very discreetly, the designers sometimes sampled very specific elements of their own greatest hits, too; the oversized, top-stitched, and check-cuffed workers jacket teamed with flat cap and palm tree silk pants showed serious kinship with their earliest menswear collections. They also delivered some new top notes: A three-quarter-length pant was structured through three pleats that accordioned out from a single stitch just south of the greater trochanter. A series of polo-kaftan hybrids adapted from their Alta Moda collection that came in the recurring leopard and tiger animal prints were a new riff on two old standards.The finale was a medley too, a patterned cacophony of silk shirting, fine gauge-knit, and silk linen tees in the recurring patterns of the collection, or a series of imagined posters for Southern Italian music festivals from way back when: Palermo Blues festival, Agrigento Mambo, Taormina Swing. Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti this was a Dolce & Gabbana menswear collection, turned up to 11.
18 June 2016
Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White:Dolce & Gabbana’s Fall show was a compendium of princess-y fairy-tale fantasies. “Today, every girl wants to be a princess,”Stefano Gabbanaasserted at a preview. “Today, everything is possible for the young generation!” He andDomenico Dolcesee themselves as storytellers as much as fashion designers, whose job is to divert people’s anxieties away from reality—much as, well, Walt Disney did himself. “We know how the world is today. Fashion makes people dream—this is the service fashion gives,” Gabbana concluded.So this time, rather than revisiting Sicilian history again, the designers found new roles for some of their familiar pieces. The fitted midi dress turned a tinselly pale blue for Cinderella; raw-edged houndstooth tweed coats and suits became her scullery maid “before” clothes; the black lace “widow” dresses converted ideally to wicked stepmother-wear; the formal menswear tailoring attired Prince Charming; and lots of gold-frogged and tailcoated military jackets outfitted a toy soldier army fromThe Nutcracker.Dolce & Gabbana have taken up a fascinating position vis-a-vis fashion in the past few years. The less they’ve paid heed to the supposed pressure to overhaul their collections with a radically different look every season and the more they’ve worked on writing chapters in their own playbook, the more successful they’ve become. And the more fun they’re having. A glance at Stefano Gabbana’s Instagram feed proves what a ridiculous, goofy sense of humor he has. It had been fully let loose on the details and accessories this time—in the glittery beaded patches on dresses and novelty sweaters showing the Seven Dwarves, toadstools, chandeliers, cats, and tailor mice, and in box bags made in the shape of castles and pumpkins. Even, in one case, on a (literal) vanity bag with a mirror scrawled with the wordsWho is the most beautiful?Me!Not that the show didn’t pick up the points of the season so far: It had plenty of glitter, obviously, but also registered oversize tailoring in a black jacket and velvet-collared menswear coat, and the ’30/’40s shoulder line of the Cinderella-referenced puffed sleeves. What might have seemed odd is that the designers did not send in the gowns for the finale.
There ought to be gowns at the end of a Cinderella tale, surely?The answer is that Dolce & Gabbana have no need to do fantasy gowns anymore, because they make full-on ball gowns for real balls and actual princesses and heiresses in their Alta Moda Couture collection, which they showed to stupendous effect on the stage ofLa Scala Milanonly four weekends ago. Given that perspective, the playful, lighthearted item- and accessory-packed ready-to-wear collection shown today represented a part of the smart parceling-out method Dolce & Gabbana have arrived at. The ready-to-wear can amuse all girls and women, get teenagers to lobby moms for holiday and birthday gifts, and give moms an excuse, maybe, to purchase themselves a black dress or suit. And, by the way, none of us is ever going to be confused by seeing a Dolce & Gabbana pre-collection publicized betweenwhiles. “We do things, but it’s a secret until they go straight into our stores,” said Gabbana. What was that—they’ve already got see-now-buy-now sorted out? To so many others in the fashion world, that really does sound like magic.
28 February 2016
The midsummer landscape in Sicily so ripples with dust and heat that it resembles the epic, parched vistas of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns. This observation—made,Stefano Gabbanasaid, somewhere deep between Palermo and Catania—was the catalyst for a collection that today incorporated a whole gulch of Western motifs. But while six-shooters, cacti, wagons, cowboy hats, horsemen, and lassos were everywhereonthe clothes, they were notinthem. That mighty opening shearling poncho apart, there was none of the Wild West–literal—chaps and hats—that we saw the last time this house turned to the prairie, in the turn-of-the-century womenswear collection worn by Madonna in her “Don’t Tell Me” video.So despite the Morricone and the dusty haze the models kicked up on the runway, this was a collection consistent with the current iterations of theDolce & Gabbanaman. There was the brooding hot-stuff Sicilian workman, out of time, in oversize peacoat and flat cap, or more fantastically in shearling floor-sweeper overcoats, some memorable shearling pants, and rib-knit long johns. There was the cultured aficionado of contemporary luxury streetwear in shearling sweats beaded with the house’s sacred heart and Velcro monk-strap sneakers rimmed with fur. Most present of all was the archetype of international playboy princeling, decked out in precisely fitted piped white shirting and dark tailoring that shimmered with embellishment or tonal jacquard. For the finale, the designers rustled a stampede of silk day pajamas, some teamed with knits: This look, they say, is sparking stampedes in stores, too.Westernalia was not the only seasoning sprinkled over this collection. Embroideries heaped upon topcoats and trucker jackets—the denim section was one to linger over—included tapestried roses and putti. Buzzing anew was the little bee symbol on gold chains, patches, and pajamas. There were Westernized versions of the same faux-naif illustrations from the designers’ recentmamma-themed womenswear show—one, on a sweatshirt, depicted Domenico and Stefano—and even some meme-tastic illustrations of Zambia, Stefano’s cat. There was so much going on here—the models were using tablets to live-stream point-of-view runway video to the screens above us, too—that through the dust it all sometimes felt like a peyote-fueled menswear mirage.
Pull it all apart, though, and what you have is some of the finest top-of-the-line tailoring and extrovert outerwear in the business—plus those D&G-pioneered pajamas (which are now becoming a category all their own).
16 January 2016
Stefano Gabbanawas sitting amid a sea of accessories—velvet slippers with turned-up toes, earrings in the shape of lemons and oranges, crocheted raffia bags, wooden clogs with rose-painted enameled soles, and gigantic sunglasses decorated with flowers and crystals—in the Dolce & Gabbana studio before their show. MeanwhileDomenico Dolcewas coaxing laughs from a model as he fitted her into a black lace bra and skirt and proceeded to demonstrate how he wanted her to first sashay the runway, then stop to take a selfie. “You see?” exclaimed Gabbana. “We don’t believe in fashion for trends any more. We want to showemotion. Just enjoy!”Their inspiration boards were pasted with printouts of vintage posters advertising the attractions of Capri, Venice, Rome, and Florence; movie stills of Italian stars; and pictures of all kinds of handmade, homemade souvenir embroideries. This summer, the designers have moved on from exploring Sicilian history to seeing Italy’s glories through the eyes of the foreign tourists who began to flood into the country after World War II. There, visitors found little shops selling embroidered circle skirts and sundresses, printed scarves, sandals, straw hats—things that Italian women had been making at home to cheer themselves up in times of austerity. “This is where the first boutiques came from,” explained Gabbana. “We think it was the beginning of Italian fashion. And it was because foreigners saw it and liked it! Sometimes we Italians don’t appreciate all the things we have here!”Stepping back a bit to view the D&G show through the prism of the season, it seems that Italian style and culture—the flamboyant, sensual, colorful sides of it—arebeing appreciated again.Alessandro Micheleis on the same sort of track atGucci, and atValentino, there’s a deep exploration of the glories of Rome. In fact, Dolce & Gabbana were actually on the scene first, and have succeeded in grabbing girls and women from all around their world with their seasonal travelogues. If that means ditching the anxieties of fashion and just going for clothes that suit and make you happy? So be it, say Dolce & Gabbana.
27 September 2015
Domenico Dolce was 7 years old when he first visited the Chinese Palace in Palermo. He didn't get it at all. "Too stupid," he said after the Dolce & Gabbana show today, tapping his head for emphasis. But why would a child understand a bizarre Asian fantasia sprouted in the heart of Catholic Sicily? It took the man that child became to spin an aristocratic 18th-century folly into a fashion fairy story for the 21st century.Each new collection from Dolce & Gabbana now presents a revision of signatures old, like the strict tailoring, and new, like the oversize geisha silhouette. But there's never a sense of the banality that you might expect to attach itself to the overly familiar. That's because the clothes are infused with a visual intensity that transcends the kitschiness of the imagery to become something verging on celebration. The parade of peacocks and dragons and swallows darting through bamboo forests that passed down the catwalk was indeed a catalog of kitsch, but by the time those elements had been printed on a silk boot or embroidered on a lace shirt or knitted into a cardigan sweater, they'd become facets of a collection that also featured three-piece suits and patched jeans and summery striped pants and an army of polo shirts. A whole lot of separates, in other words—suggestions for integrating even the most extravagant piece into a wardrobe.A raw-edged hopsack tee embroidered with birds perched in an orange tree was a perfect fusion of chinoiserie and Sicily, combining artful and humble. But there was humor, too, in such a notion, and you could also see it in the espadrilles with which every outfit was paired, sometimes plain, more often lavishly embroidered or beaded. Peasant footwear made fit for a king. Two years ago Stefano Gabbana said, "There is so much in Sicily, we could be doing this forever." He wasn't kidding.
20 June 2015
If their men's collection was a celebration of family, it made perfect sense that Dolce & Gabbana's women's show would focus on Mamma, the fulcrum of the family. And what a focus! There were 11 mums on stage with their children. That required a full nursery setup backstage. On the runway, three models walked with their own children (the sheer joy of one little girl to be out theredoing itmade the hardest hearts melt). And Dolce stalwart Bianca Balti catwalked with ahugebun in the oven. Viva La Mamma!"She's always there, she's the person you can always call." It's just like Stefano Gabbana was saying: "Every man everywhere has a mother." You could score all kinds of sociopolitical points off such a notion in the present headline-driven climate of male-dominated, life-denying madness, but Gabbana was much keener to make a point about fashion, which is often accused of being detached from the eternal verities: life, love, relationship with self and others. The positive message of the show—and the collection—was that everything we are is an extension of where we came from. One more time: Viva La Mamma. (Il Papà had his moment in the spotlight in January.)Tearing oneself away from the onstage baby-watching (it was impossible to ignore the little ones responding to the unholy stimuli of a gigantic fashion production), it was almost equally entertaining to see how Domenico and Stefano responded to the inspiration. There were prints (and embroideries) based on drawings by Domenico's nieces and nephews that looked exactly like naughty kids had taken some crayons to Mum's best dress. But those showpieces would likely exert less commercial appeal than a classic black dress or double-breasted skirtsuit with a black fox stole (hotmamma) or a simple rose-strewn shift (sweetmamma). The rose was everything to the collection, not just because it's the flower you give your mother on Mother's Day, but because Stefano's favorite childhood memory of his own mother is the rose scent of her red lipstick. That's why Dolce & Gabbana's lipsticks are uniquely fragranced. Memory speaks loudest when it's closest to home.The spectacle of infants paraded for the entertainment of adults is rarely edifying, but there was something so essentially good-hearted about this show—and so utterly persuasive with the patient participation of the actual mothers and their children—that those reservations would today have been the preserve of the churl. There was a crazy wit in play, too.
A green, three-quarter-sleeved fur coat—a real lunch-at-Le Cirque piece—came with a matching tote sized for carrying nappies. Some models were wearing crystal-and-fur headphones, the contemporary crown of the modern queen.Anyway, that's Mother's Day sorted for 2016. Come May 8 next year, Italian mums across the land will be forgoing red roses for a shiny black Dolce & Gabbana shopping bag.
1 March 2015
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana could hardly have anticipated the past few weeks, but fashion has an odd way of dovetailing with current events, and the message of love that drove the designers' latest collection couldn't have been timelier. Love, family, community—the eternal verities that offer security when the foundations are kicked out from under us.The curtains opened on eight real families in atableau vivant, friends and colleagues of the designers', from grandmothers to babies, adding a new spin to the idea of DNA that people are always paying lip service to in fashion. The images on the clothing featured other families, from Renaissance renditions of the Nativity to naive cartoons of the classic nuclear mum, dad, and two kids. The model casting was cross-generational as well. "Fashion's a family too," said Gabbana, and the sense of continuity carried over into the collection. "This is a fashion show without fashion," he added. Maybe he meant that, rather than anythingnew, there was instead the reassurance of the familiar: a three-piece suit in black brocade, some artfully distressed denim, an embroidered sweatshirt, a graphic tee. There was comfort, too, in tweeds, jersey pants, pajamas, lounge suits, rubber Wellington boots, and shoes that looked like a sophisticated take on pony-skin clogs. Even the most ornate pieces—bullion-braided, extravagantly embroidered—touched on the notion of family. The bees and the crowns could have been old family crests. And everywhere there were the appliqués: "Amore," "Famiglia," "Love Forever."A caveat: In this celebration of family, the diversity of its modern variants was distinctly absent. Gabbana insisted that he and Dolce stood for that modern family, which felt a bit like a dodge. Better, perhaps, to see the collection—and the show—as the designers' homage to the traditions that have been their own safe haven. Love isn't all you need, but it's a helluva help.
17 January 2015
The idea of getting "dressed to kill" (or be killed) originated with bullfighters. Are you for one second surprised that for Dolce & Gabbana, Spain is the new Sicily? Those two points on the compass share a wealth of inspirations for Domenico and Stefano. Today there was a black net sheath, a black corset paired with thigh-high black stockings, a black jacket and pencil skirt combination that had the sexy severity of the racy widow—all of it adding up to enough Catholic guilt to choke a pope. There were also flamenco polka dots.But at the same time, the corrida opened up a new world of possibilities for the designers. The silhouette and embellishment of a matador's jacket inspired an entire passage of the collection. It was aired with rompers to bring it up to this decade. Then there was the color red: the color of blood in the bullring, the color of the carnations that were Domenico's mother's favorite flowers. They were embroidered everywhere, but were most effective as the streamlined adjunct to a body-conscious striped top.The show was huge, but inside, fighting to get out, was a straightforward story of leggy silhouettes, romantic full skirts, and ornate embellishment on simple shapes. The finale nailed that. The Dolce army marched in white bullfighter shirts and high-waisted, embroidered shorts in red duchesse.Olé!
21 September 2014
Season after season, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have pulled Sicily to bits and ingeniously stitched it back together with love, humor, sensuality, and razor-sharp tailoring. Like peeling an onion, there was always another layer of history or art or sentiment. But today, they just might have jumped the shark. Their inspiration was the most arcane and academic yet: the Spanish domination of Sicily between 1516 and 1713. Something you might research rather than feel in your bones. Domenico and Stefano didn't even bother with the historical niceties—they simply surrendered to a postcard fantasy. Castanets clicked while toreadors paraded. No, the Spanish didn't import the corrida to Sicily; this was just creative license on the part of the designers. Like the bull, which was one leitmotif of the collection. "Every woman wants one, every man wants one, too," Stefano announced to great merriment after the show, before quickly issuing a correction: "Or wants tobeone." The bull appeared in a splash of blood or garlanded with carnations, because theotherleitmotif was the color red. The finale was comprised of suits in every shade of red, from vermilion to maroon. It was abloodbath!Dolce & Gabbana's fantasy of the Spanish influence fed on braided brocade jackets (the braid in black, rather than the gold of a real bullfighter). You could picture the look working if it was brought down-to-earth with distressed denim. (It was; it did.) Otherwise, the tang of fancy dress was a little too sharp. The three-quarter-length pants and three-quarter-length sleeves are already familiar from Dolce & Gabbana's recent Sicilian excursions, but here, the length was delivered in a hooded white top and matching pants, both swirling with black braid, that looked like something one of Truman Capote's "swans" might have worn yachting round the Aegean. A seductive enough image, but rather incongruous for the circumstances.Another mainstay of the collection was the flamenco dancer's polka dots. You can be pretty sure that was one detail the Spanish neglected to import to Sicily, nevertheless it was actually one of the most pleasing—and potentially commercial—facets of today's show, because it bridged the gap between the excess of bull and the rigor of the Spain we know from Goya and Velázquez and Balenciaga.
There were certainly enough hyper-tailored dark suits—with white shirts, narrow ties, and a waistcoat made for the modern matador—to satisfy a contemporary need for reassuring sartorial strictness.A footnote, literally: The unsung heroes of Dolce & Gabbana's most recent Sicilian renaissance are whoever was responsible for the shoes. Those anonymous cobblers once again delivered creative, charming footwear. Of special note—the furry slippers and sandals.
20 June 2014
Once upon a time in Palermo, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana fell asleep and dreamed a fairy tale. Then they based their new collection on it. Which was obvious from the moment an enchanted forest rose from the bowels of the Metropol while snow swirled and Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" played."Enchanted Sicily" was the title Dolce & Gabbana gave their collection, but what we saw was actually a timely departure from the overtly folkloric tone of the duo's recent collections. As wonderful as they have been, there was an inevitable sneaking suspicion that the Sicilian vein was nearing the moment when it would be well and truly tapped. Here were ten of the all-black, widow's-weeds-y outfits that established Dolce & Gabbana's fashion signature three decades ago, but they were like breathing spaces in a fantastic riot of fairies, princesses, owls, foxes, squirrels, and swans. There was even a frog for a princess to kiss. All of them were rendered in charmingly naive appliqués. The owls on a blue brocade shift were a particularly memorable combination of ultra-cute and hyper-sophisticated.Sicily was still in the mix, but in the same way it featured in the men's collection in January. The island has been enough of a cross-cultural historical crossroads that you can basically pick an influence and run with it. For the men's show, it was the seven Norman kings who swept down from the North (veryLord of the Rings). Here, it was their female consorts who inspired the embroidery and gilding, the gothic appliqué, the studded balaclavas and gauntlets. Those antique invaders brought their myths and legends with them, and that, according to Gabbana, is when fairies arrived in Italy. The recurrent motif in the collection was the key that opened the door to a secret garden.For all the arcana of their inspiration, the clothes themselves managed to build a bridge to the real world, or at least a world real enough for a woman to wear an A-line tweed coat with a little appliqué, a skirt suit in deepest forest green, or even one of the beautiful Riding Hood capes. As a shortcut to escape while the world's weather patterns surrender to globally warmed insanity, they could scarcely be more apt. Of course, Domenico and Stefano couldn't leave it there. They marched a platoon of gothic Tinkerbells down the catwalk as a finale. Who doesn't need some fairy dust?
22 February 2014
Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce say they don't watchGame of Thrones, but their collection today was an extravagant acknowledgment of the kind of butch pageantry that has made the show such a cult phenom. Gabbana's rationale was that this whole crazy, mixed-up world has taken a turn for the medieval. He may be right: The ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots certainly suggests a twenty-first-century neo-feudalism. But Dolce & Gabbana's switch from folksy Siciliana to a darker, gutsier historicism came in the nick of time. There wasn't much more they could wring in fashion terms from salt-of-the-earth villagers.So the single plaintive olive tree that backdropped last season's show was replaced by thrones, suits of armor, and regal portraiture. And the casting moved away from all-sorts Sicilian townsfolk to a more idealized masculinity—for which read "handsome models" (half naked at times, in the Dolce tradition of male objectification). Some of them wore coronets and bejeweled gauntlets like young lords. They also sported oversize sweats printed with images of the Norman kings who invaded Sicily in the eleventh century.Yes, it was still Sicily that determined the character of the collection, but the designers found a way to widen the frame of reference by drawing inspiration from the posse of hardass northerners who swooped in a millenium ago to reshape the island of Dolce's birth. The churches they built, for instance, were reproduced as images on a peacoat and a velvet suit, their saints were also printed on velvet, and a print of their suits of armor decorated a spectacular shearling. The hoods that they would have worn under the helmets of that armor were remodeled in embroidered wool.But Domenico and Stefano were much too canny to surrender wholeheartedly to history. Those printed sweats? A consummately proportioned blend of past and present. There were plenty of the sharply tailored suits that define the Dolce ethos: double-breasted, nipped waist, lapels stitched flat for added leanness. And, in the end, it was their own history that captivated them. Tony Ward closed the show in a black velvet tux, a man of some un-lean means wearing his years of experience with all the balls it takes to live that life.
10 January 2014
Sicily is proving a truly bottomless well of inspiration for Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. Today was their umpteenth collection drawing on yet another facet of Sicilian culture, in this case the island's interaction with Greece in the ancient world. Sounds kind of academic, but it wasn't. Dolce and Gabbana are designers, after all, not history teachers. So when they used old photographs of ruined amphitheaters as prints, they had a pleasing graphic quality. Ionic columns reproduced as heels on shoes were a flash of wit. So were the gold coins that exploded into chunky prizefighter-like corset belts, especially when those belts gripped delicate dresses petaled with Sicily's almond blossom. That hard/soft contrast is a Dolce & Gabbana signature, the same way that a woman in a bustier and black lace slip (she's a stock character in the designers' repertoire, and she reappeared here) is anything but vulnerable with her go-on-I-dare-you attitude. Women like Bianca Balti and Bianca Brandolini d'Adda, in other words, who were both front-row today.Gabbana described the collection as "an unconscious dream," in the sense that the clothes embodied the blend of the real and the irrational that can only be found in dreams. Perhaps that was why the designers invoked Federico Fellini, whose movies blazed trails in that territory over and over again. But there was scarcely Fellini's flavor of surreal exuberance here, unless you count some odd alpaca wraps. Rather, there was actually a pretty grounded, earthy feel to the collection; it was at its most ethereal when the almond blossoms started to fall.Sophia Loren was a reference point. Once again this season, it was Catherine McNeil, in a red slip with black bra showing, who summoned up the ghost of screen goddesses past. But the sheer polka-dotted blouses, pencil skirts, and coat-dresses all had Loren's distinctly ample, womanly slant. The more modern shapes—a mini-trapeze top with shorts, say—were the sort of sheerly pretty looks you could imagine Dolce girls like Bianca, Giovanna, and Anna parading around the Med next summer.What brought all the strands of the collection together were the wonderful artisanal workmanship and fabric research. One standout: a richly aubergine-toned shift in glossy lacquered silk, with embroidered blossoms trailing down its front.
For the finale, the gilded army of women that stormed the catwalk offered another vision—albeit rarefied—of the female empowerment that other designers have been talking about all week.
21 September 2013
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have found a perfect formula: Sicily as an inspiration for clothes modeled on the catwalk by Sicilians themselves. The sweet authenticity of the idea has powered their last few collections for men, and when cynics in today's audience sighed, "Oh no, not again," you wanted to slap them. Or torture them by passing on Gabbana's confident declaration: "There is so much in Sicily, we could be doing this forever."It was Sicily's Greece-inflected mythology that informed today's show: Zeus and Apollo—one a force for creation, the other the apogee of beauty. "Us," Gabbana said with an ironic chuckle. The duo sure needs a laugh right now, as their legal woes mount. So, when Gabbana said, "Fashion is freedom," his words had a particularly personal resonance.And that's the way the presentation played out: as fantasy, as escape. The soundtrack was Ennio Morricone's music forCinema Paradiso. No surprises there. Against a backdrop that was purest memory—a huge, gnarled olive tree—the designers alternated young men in suits so sharply tailored they needed stretch to fit, with other young men in shorts and short-sleeve tops printed with classical scenery. Zeus vs. Apollo. That's a little reductive. The tailoring statement included slim suits in raffia and shantung silk, and jackets, trousers, and shirts in a matchy-matchy symphony of stripes. And the model casting actually united Zeus and Apollo. Domenico and Stefano wanted a modern Ulysses, someone slightly more heroic than the boys from the village who have peopled their last few catwalks.Those model castings have become a kind of reality show in Sicily. Word goes out that Dolce & Gabbana is on the prowl, and Twitter comes alive with kids chasing their moment of catwalk glory, which tracks right back to Gabbana's statement about fashion and freedom. The power to dream is fashion's greatest cliché, but when it comes alive, as it did on the Dolce catwalk today, you just can't beat it. Which was clearly the height of feeling that spurred the exultantly naked man who evaded security as he tore down the catwalk at the very end of the show. Streaking lives!
21 June 2013
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana used the golden mosaics of Sicily's Cathedral of Monreale as a starting point for their new Fall collection. They presumably made that design decision months ago: As they put it in their press notes, "the art of mosaic-making is a slow and precise one." They never could've known that, in the wake of Pope Benedict XVI's resignation and in the days leading up to the conclave to elect his successor, new shadows would fall on the Church. Amidst headlines in Italian papers this week about sexual intrigue in the Vatican, Dolce & Gabbana sent out a dozen dresses printed with Monreale's famous Byzantine and Venetian mosaics, and just as many lacy frocks in cardinal red. For jewelry, rosaries.Theirs is a romanticized view of the Catholic Church, to be sure, one far removed from the tawdriness of contemporary scandals. And in terms of fashion, that vision proved compelling here, blessedly less kitsch than last season's. Credit for that goes in part to the rather more earthly herringbones and checks they used for skirtsuits and coats and one errant pair of bloomers. The menswear materials made for a brief interlude, though. Soon the designers were back at the icon worship, cutting lace dresses with the wide sleeves of altar boys' garments, crafting a bustier from altar-chalice gold, and, in a task that might prove as labor-intensive as those twelfth-century mosaics, hand-beading the evening numbers with religious figures. Their fans will raise an amen to that.
23 February 2013
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana herded the menfolk from a couple of Sicilian villages onto their catwalk for Spring, and the result was so curiously profound that it's no wonder they did the same thing for their Fall show, street-casting 82 men and boys. It was even more appropriate given that their theme was "devotion." You could look at the entire Dolce & Gabbana saga as one long love story—what two men are capable of producing as a result of their devotion to each other—but this collection took the notion of devotion several steps further. The religiosity of small Sicilian communities was celebrated in wide-sleeved poplin tops trimmed with priestly lace, in the religious icons printed on tees and sweats, and in the respectful black Sunday-best suits that Domenico Dolce would have remembered his father tailoring for their village.If that all sounds a little bit tooseriosofor a duo who've made their name by dressing iconoclastic superstars and footballers, it's important to bear in mind that kitsch is never far away with Dolce & Gabbana. Yes, they kitted out Madonna, but we're talking about images of therealMadonna here, the kind that tourists eat up in Palermo. Likewise, the adorable granny needlepoint that the designers ladled onto velvet jackets and coats (with matching shoes). Under a catwalk hung with chandeliers garlanded with roses, Domenico and Stefano mounted a parade of cinematic clichés, from the humble altar boy in his respectful white blouse to the arrogant landowner in his big black fur coat. Between the two extremes, there were plenty of options for Dolce fans. But the most telling impression left by the show was the compact, determined dignity of the men on the catwalk. Like actors in a Pasolini movie, they managed to make a nonsense of the world in which they were briefly extras.
11 January 2013
"Sicilia" announced dresses made from raffia sacks that might have held flour in a past life. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana returned one more time to Dolce's native Sicily for Spring. Side by side with those raffia numbers were umbrella-stripe separates, dresses printed with street-theater puppets, and tops and skirts emblazoned with the collectible head-shaped vases and dishes native to the Caltagirone region. The models wore souvenir scarves in their hair and chandelier earrings in the shape of those street puppets. Sound kitsch? You bet it was, maybe even more so than their hot pepper fest of a Spring show last year.The designers have landed on a winning recipe and they're sticking with it. Once again, this was a crowd-pleaser of a collection. The show-closing corset and "crinoline" made from bent cane like classic Sicilian baskets sparked a spontaneous round of applause. But if that won't find its way into anyone's closet, much of what was on the runway today will. The striped pieces deserve a special callout; they had a casual appeal that felt fresh for the designers.As successful as the Dolce & Gabbana formula is, though, it's starting to become almost too predictable. It might be time for the pair to move outside their comfort zone.
22 September 2012
Domenico Dolce's Sicilian roots have been the USP of the business he's built with Stefano Gabbana, and it's fair to say that the pair's fortunes have often seemed tied to the degree to which they celebrate those roots.MoltoSicily,moltosuccess. By which formula, their latest collection—moltissimoSicily—might be their most successful. Because this time, Dolce and Gabbana didn't just cop the attitude of a sexy widow or pinstriped snappy dresser, they imported a village, lock, stock, and old stone wall. Or at least that's what it felt like. A list of the "protagonists" showed that the cast, nearly all of them non-models, were actually drawn from a number of Sicilian towns and villages, but it still felt like you were watching generations of one tight community marching with proud gravity down the catwalk to a tune of a traditional village band. And the parade packed the kind of authentic emotional punch that is a rare and beautiful thing in fashion.It also inspired the designers to create clothes as desirable as any they've made in the past. The simplest way to make this point is by comparing this collection with the opulent gilded arrogance of the last. Here, there were humility and charm instead: kids wearing their tightly belted hand-me-downs with insouciance and pride; adults, unassuming but equally proud, in three-piece suits that had the well-worn look of Sunday best. The fact that they were actually cut from wool or linen gauze in veil-fine layers was a reminder that this was, after all, a fashion show we were watching.But the illusions that fashion is founded on seemed to be suspended here. It wasn't just because the woven striped cotton shirts and linens with their raw hems, the awning-stripe jackets and souvenir prints on shirts and tees felt so...real. It was also because, given the season at hand, everything here spoke of summer, infused with the yearning that average joes feel for sun and sea. The customary eight-packed Dolce hunks in trunks looked quite out of place, by comparison.Only one caveat: What the hell are Domenico and Stefano going to do to top this? Has Sicily finally surrendered all its treasures?
22 June 2012
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana set the stage for their latest show with chandeliers festooned in real flowers and vines along with an enormous gilded mirror that was propped at the end of the runway. It was unabashedly lavish, but it had nothing on the duo's new collection, which was dripping in gold bullion. Once again, the designers found themselves plucking ideas from Domenico's native Sicily, specifically its baroque religious traditions. It truly is the birthplace that keeps on giving.Capes played a starring role, just as they had at the label's men's show last month. When they were long to the knee, especially, they recalled a cardinal's vestments, albeit rendered in black and gold. White lace frocks, meanwhile, put some in mind of communion dresses. In general, the silhouettes weren't as va-va-voom as they can be here. In fact, more often than not, they were away from the body, which gave them a newness that's been lacking for a few seasons chez Domenico and Stefano. Given how sheer they were, though, they weren't quite holy.Colorful needlepoint florals and prints of cherubs also contributed to a sweeter-than-usual mood. The finale parade consisted not of the usual corset tops, bralets, and bloomers but of more black lace coats, dresses, and skirtsuits embroidered in metallic gold thread. Dolce & Gabbana pushed its vocabulary with positive results, but it wasn't unfamiliar enough to dampen the religious devotion of its fans.
25 February 2012
The staginess of the presentation was a giveaway. Dolce & Gabbana's venue was swathed in quilted red velvet, illuminated by bordello lighting. White-tie-and-tailed beauties served Champagne to guests as they were seated; the set was a broken-down opera backdrop. And when the show started, Pavarotti boomed his way through Verdi on the soundtrack. It was opera night in Palermo, circa 1910, with all the Sicilian boys in their worn Sunday best and the local aristos cramming the balconies in their faded finery.For some godforsaken reason, there were people in the audience today who took exception to that enchanting vision of sartorial historicism. "It's not escape, it's a dream," said Stefano Gabbana before the show, although escape and dream actually blended effortlessly in the gilded spectacular that he and Domenico Dolce mounted. The genesis was a cape that Dolce's dad had tailored in the mists of time.Tisterathey call them in Sicily, and it was that tradition the duo tapped. "We didn't look at a book or a movie for inspiration," said Gabbana. "It was all about family."And family, spanning generations, sparked a collection that straddled decades, from cashmere underwear that was the male equivalent of granny pants, to the cabled cardigan and drop-crotch pants that looked like hip-hop wear, Sicilian-style. But the star of the show was the overcoat in dozens of manifestations, all of which made the catwalk for the finale.In the snow globe of fashion, one of the fiercest accusations is that clothes are costume. The brocaded extremity—from flat caps to socks—of this collection obviously courted such criticism. But the gilding was washed, sprayed, boiled, and reduced to some kind of bruised honesty. Persuasive.
13 January 2012
Molto, molto Italiano. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have long made the most of their roots, but at today's show, they really went all-out, from the colorful street festival lights suspended from the ceiling of their Metropol venue to the the soles of the models' plastic wicker sandals.Picturesque summertime in a small town in southern Italy circa the 1950's was the designers' starting point. The eggplants, zucchinis, tomatoes, and hot peppers you'd find at an outdoor market inspired the oversize prints that decorated fit-and-flare dresses and midriff-baring bra tops and full skirts. Coincidentally, Rossella Jardini served up a vegetable dish of her own last night at Moschino Cheap And Chic, but Domenico and Stefano pushed the idea further, with crochet tablecloth sheaths and matching coats or little skirtsuits. Farfalle pasta shapes and garlic cloves dangled from earrings. And this was all set to a soundtrack of Sophia Loren belting out her best "Mambo Italiano."After dark, Dolce and Gabbana left the veggies in the kitchen in favor of lace cocktail dresses that out-sparkled the lights above the runway (a bona fide hit, those) and a finale of their signature corsets encrusted to the hilt in colorful crystals. Sure, it got a little too kitsch for comfort sometimes. But it was also the feel-good moment of the Milan season.
24 September 2011
Dolce & Gabbana's new collection cast a wide net, with echoes of everything from Sicilian fishermen to A.C. Milan soccer players to the faceless millions Twittering on their smartphones. It was actually the social networking of this last lot that Stefano Gabbana insisted was the inspiration for clothes that used net every which wayandloose. But that rather abstract connection was less appealing than the idea that the collection had been put together with more traditional nets in mind. Besides, isn't a Mediterranean fishing community one of the original social networks?Netting defined the collection from T-shirt to toe. In leather, it was a blouson that had a romantic Capulet edge. In a fine meshlike version, it added shimmer to a fitted little military jacket. It was a veiled layer over shorts à la athlete, and the camo-nettinglike component of a flight suit. In a way, it was the masculine equivalent of the sheer fabrics that circle endlessly around womenswear, and, like that enduring peekaboo trend, it was a win-some, lose-some proposition. Best of the bunch were the roughest pieces, the ones that looked like they'd been literally stitched from net that had served another function. In other words, the Sicilian bits.Backing that up, the sartorial black suit-white shirt side of the collection was strong, too. It might even be pointing to a surprising new customer base for the brand. Though the 12-pack paragon David Gandy paraded bare-chested down the catwalk a couple of times (preparatory to being borne through the streets of Milan in advance of his book-launch party in the designers' men's boutique tonight) it was Justin Bieber that Stefano Gabbana seemed more engaged by when he talked about the widening embrace of his business. The innate boyishness of a short-sleeved white shirt with an elasticized waist worn over slim black pants felt much more Bieber-ready than Gandy-worthy. Boyz II Men? No. Men II Boyz.
17 June 2011
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana may not have been the earliest adopters of new technology, but they're using the not insignificant resources at their disposal to become leaders now. Before the show, guests at the Metropol were invited to log on to the company's Web site and leave comments. Those comments were then streamed live on screens above the runway that were playing footage from backstage, the front row, and outside the theater. It wasn't a bad way to pass the time before the clothes hit the catwalk.For Fall the designers returned to a favorite theme, one that happens to be getting a lot of action in Milan this week: the masculine-feminine mix. Arizona Muse was the first model out, wearing a double-breasted black jacquard jacket, matching trousers cropped right below the knee, a porkpie hat, and oxfords. The hair team even gave her sideburns. This wasn't the molto sexy, cut-to-fit tailoring of a year ago, though. Madonna circa "Open Your Heart" is more like it.Next up was one of the duo's signature long-sleeved sheaths, stitched up in bands of lace and a miniature star print. The show progressed this way, alternating between one boy look, one girl. On the "fellas": crisp shirts, low-slung pants, boxy vests, bright sequined evening jackets, and fur coats inset with stars. And for the gals: more of those sheaths, plus corset dresses and billowy floor-length numbers in bigger star patterns, lace motifs, and musical-note prints.For the finale, as has become the custom here, the models emerged en masse, but by now the "boys" had doffed their jackets to reveal their matching patent suspenders and white collared shirts. The designers' tailoring skills are as sharp as ever and no one could accuse them of losing their touch with a sexy dress, but in the end you didn't feel transported anywhere they haven't taken you before. You wanted the duo to apply to the clothes more of the thinking outside the box that they have been doing on the latest technological developments.
26 February 2011
There was a brilliant Dries Van Noten show some years back that celebrated Bryan Ferry's early-seventies leopard-clad glamness, but his subsequent career as rock's Most Elegant Man has been a significantly under-exploited inspiration in contemporary menswear. Until today, that is, when Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana made him the launchpad for their latest collection. Ferry's record covers were all over the mood board, his music was all over the show, and there he was on the seasonal "icon" T-shirt. It seemed entirely appropriate, then, that the man himself was front-row center. But the show's theme,Sartoria Eccentrica, actually had much less to do with Ferry's own classic style than the designers' retailoring of anything classic, starting at Savile Row, for a much younger audience.The singer's taste for West End girls is well documented—the beauteous Amanda Sheppard was at his side today. The clothes on the runway, though, were better suited to East End boys. Low-rise, multi-pocketed pants were slung off skinny suspenders. One model sported Freddy Krueger stripes and a trilby casually tossed back on his head. There was a spiffy edge to a checked, fitted, double-breasted jacket, while cropped, double-vented jackets and those pegged, low-slung pants created a boxy, bubble-butted silhouette that added beef to the already buff models. Add that to the chunky, bovver-ready footwear and these boys were a bit of rough fighters, not lovers. But wasn't Bryan Ferry famously a slave to love?Domenico and Stefano threw the lovers a bone with a couple of pavé-sequined jackets in pink and black, then they closed the show with their own quintessential march past of black velvet jackets and distressed Dolce denims. Call it glam for a brash, butch new age. As for Ferry's more rarified brand of contemporary glamour? That remains to be explored another day.
14 January 2011
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana are coming off a big year, in which they celebrated the 25th anniversary of their business. What better way to move into their next quarter century, their thinking went, than with the blank slate of an almost all-white collection? The idea behind this quite lovely show, the designers explained backstage, was a hope chest. That is, the things new and handed down that a bride might pack before she sets off on the next chapter of her life.In addition to not-so-virginal wedding-night lingerie, which the models wore for the characteristically showstopping finale, the Dolce & Gabbana girl's trousseau was stuffed with bedspreads, tablecloths, and curtains transformed into the duo's familiar hourglass sheaths, sexy skirtsuits, baby-doll dresses, rompers, and not a few va-va-voom corsets. Out they came in broderie anglaise, what looked like antique hand-tatting and crochet, a velvet floral, and, because it would hardly be a Dolce & Gabbana outing without it, leopard print. To finish: more lace smothered in clear crystals for a sparkling evening look.This show didn't necessarily have the emotional impact of last season, with its tear-jerking behind-the-scenes video. But it certainly showed the designers in top form, keenly aware of their strengths (has there been a season in recent memory in which more editors have worn Dolce & Gabbana in the front row?) and making the very most of them.
25 September 2010
Designers mostly spend their lives in pursuit of the new. But with both their women's and men's collections, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have been going back to their roots of late, emphasizing what's most authentic about their vision and resetting their compass for true north.It started with the soundtrack, which replaced the usual rampant disco with Annie Lennox, singing alone at her piano. The audience kept cheering at the appearance of Tony Ward, who starred in Dolce & Gabbana's first men's campaign 20 years ago (when he was still dating Madonna, the most recent Dolce face). Other models included the label's most memorable torsos: Christian Monzon, Enrique Palacios, Tyson Ballou, Evandro Soldati, and David Gandy. Here, they staged an almighty battle of the bods.But enough with the sideshow. The collection itself refreshed the house's classic signatures, primarily Sicily, where Dolce learned his formidable tailoring skills. Those were on display here in an elegant three-piece suit in white linen, as sported by the lord of the manor, and in a softly structured black version that his tenant farmers might wear with a white shirt for Sunday best. Blousons in leather mesh or perforated suede highlighted the label's craftsmanship. And the trademark Dolce sensuality was present in tank tops, slouchy knits, and distressed jeans loosely belted with rope; all boasted the kind of seductive attitude—indolent, up for it—that has helped these designers build a billion-dollar business.Contrasted with that were sharply defined pieces like the black-and-white-striped knit polos with matching shorts, and the familiar march past of several dozen tuxedo variants. After that, the boys gathered around the piano for a final sing-along with Annie, and the curtain came down on her last celebratory whoop. The audience couldn't have agreed more.
18 June 2010
When you strip away the facade and the fandango of fashion, what's left that matters? In many ways, those soul-searching questions are the subtext of the season, as the industry strives to re-anchor itself in fundamental values after a decade spent sucking up to celebrities and, increasingly, pumping out overpriced pseudo luxury made in China. In Milan, Dolce & Gabbana marshaled their response to the call for authenticity and a reconnection with every woman who's been a frustrated, alienated shopper over the past few years: Simply, yet movingly, they showed their classics, and how they make them.In a video, Domenico Dolce was seen expertly running tailor's tacks into the lapel of a jacket in the studio—as he learned at the knee of his Sicilian tailor father—while Stefano Gabbana sketched, took measurements, and finished one of the curvaceous Italianate sex-bomb dresses the pair made their own 20 years ago. Alone, those scenes could have been self-aggrandizing, but the real kicker was the way the designers handed over the spotlight to the skilled, white-coated women and men in their ateliers who craft their product.At the end, as at the Marc Jacobs show in New York, it had hard-bitten members of the audience running backstage with tears in their eyes. Dolce & Gabbana are facade maintainers and fandango-dancers with the best of them, but they hit a nerve in making the information in this show intimate and personal, as well as instantly available across the globe via live streaming. Perhaps the level of that exposure cuts out the need for too much explanation of the looks they put out. Aficionados will note the very new: the fact that quite a large proportion of the dresses and suits were knitted. But what really matters? That what Dolce & Gabbana does remains, immaculately, the same—and there's evidently still so much enjoyment and passion in the making of it.
27 February 2010
Style.com did not review the Fall 2010 menswear collections. Please enjoy the photos, and stay tuned for our complete coverage of the Spring 2011 collections, including reviews of each show by Tim Blanks.
15 January 2010
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana looked back to go forward in their Spring show. Much to the pleasure of the audience, the designers removed the runway and flooded the dark space they were showing in with light, a move that evoked something of the atmosphere of their joyous presentations of the nineties. As did the collection—a recapturing of the mannish tailoring and curvy Latin lingerie, see-through lace, café-curtain macramé dresses, and rose-patterned chintzes that were first put through their paces by the likes of Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, and Naomi Campbell. This time, though, the clothes are aimed at a new generation, and the market is global—to which end, Dolce & Gabbana put two bloggers in the front row, who were tapping out their commentaries while the show was going on.There was a South American angle this time—silk fringing on black lace dresses and spiffy suitings that might suggest the denizens of a tango bar. Really, though, the classic extremes of masculine and feminine illustrated here go back to Domenico Dolce's Sicilian childhood and all the things he saw and learned in a household that centered on his father's business as a tailor. Part of his culture is a Catholic, Southern Italian adoration of the female form—and he and Gabbana gave that full vent when they replaced their traditional finale of overblown ball gowns with a runway thronged with girls in corsets.
26 September 2009
Style.com did not review the Spring 2010 menswear collections. Please enjoy the photos, and stay tuned for our complete coverage of the Spring 2011 collections, including reviews of each show by Tim Blanks.
19 June 2009
No wonder Dolce & Gabbana are in love with Elsa Schiaparelli for Fall. She was an original proponent of the ballooning shoulder (the fashion story of the season), worked her surrealist glamour through tough and weird times, and was an Italian to boot. In an edgy moment, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana used her example to defy all fashion nervousness and lay on a sumptuous show whose production values gave no quarter to the idea that cutbacks and timidity should be the order of the day. Quite the opposite, in fact. The front row was positively teeming with A-listers: Scarlett Johansson, Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts, Freida Pinto, Eva Mendes, and others who had all flown in to view the clothes, and then take in theExtreme Beauty in Vogueexhibition opening that the designers have underwritten at the Palazzo della Ragione.The thirties and forties references played through the displaced gloves used as headpieces and scarves, the shell-shaped buttons, the clunky wartime suede platform wedges, the homages to Schiap's shocking pink, and, of course, those huge, puffed-up leg-of-mutton sleeves, rising up in some cases to earlobe level. The spending on luxe materials and a cinematic level of beauty never ceased. Fox, dyed goat hair, mink, and rich brocades were worked into narrow-waisted silhouettes, alternating—though not much—with bell-shaped skirts.It might have been a one-message show, but as is always the case with these superconfident designers, there was never any surrender of house identity. Dolce & Gabbana-isms were wittily reiterated when their signature Sicilian corseted and see-through lingerie dresses reappeared, Schiap-shaped, counterpointed by black tuxedo suits. Finally, their traditional ending parade of exaggerated crinolines shifted the look completely to their own territory, with Monroe photo prints spreading over the skirts. Times may be tough, but these are two guys who are not about to give an inch on what they believe in.
1 March 2009
When it comes to throwing a glossy, high-spec runway performance, there's no one left in Milan who does it with quite the bravura of DolceeGabbana. They have their devices, of course, and they spell them out up front, leaving nothing in doubt: A preshow video named the collection "Pigiama Barocco." That meant classic gentlemen's silk pajamas, spotted or striped, with lots of bejeweling in the models' hair and on brooches, for starters. Big poufy skirts came into it, too, and tiered-lace cardigans, and then gilded brocades that took a sideways segue into some of those flat, exaggerated geometric constructions (big Minnie Mouse-ear sleeves, in this case) that are popping up all over.Busy as this sounds, there was focus. At a point where most handbag displays have become lackluster, Dolce and Gabbana's literally shone, loaded with sequined embroideries and gold chains (a smart proposition for toting a purse as a piece of jewelry). For evening, the designers also nailed a couple more rising trends: mini-crinis in bouncing semi-sheer skirts, and sumptuously encrusted paillette embroideries. Finale-wise, it was all-out with romantic ball skirts studded with roses. In other words, not a whiff of economic anxiety was detectable within these four walls, and that in itself was curiously cheering.
24 September 2008
Backstage before the show, Stefano Gabbana explained that the catwalk would be emphasizing a pajama theme, though there would be a multitude of other options available back in the showroom. Understandable that he felt such a clarification might be necessary—would the Dolce man who was so well-served by last season's studly chunk be ready for bed? In the end, Gabbana's doubt was needless. What he and Domenico Dolce managed to serve up was the most sophisticated version yet of the casual/formal hybrid that is the 21st century's contribution to menswear. And the pajama theme underscored Dolce & Gabbana's new mantra: comfort. Picture a pinstripe suit (foundation stone of the Dolce empire) with the jacket shawl-collared yet the trousers drawstrung, elastic of waist, and rolled of ankle. Such forgiving elegance! A silk denim tuxedo was another way to make the same point. (A collar and tie accompanying drawstring shorts—a bathing suit by any other name—were a bridge too far. But the wingtip mules? How could something so wrong be so right?)The pajama-striped, shawl-collared suit that opened the show comfortably established the manifesto: no shirt, just a scarf. Even given the exaggeration one allows the catwalk, Dolce and Gabbana were clearly onto something. Chic-but-comfy is the grail of enough guys that the combination of tailoring and trackies should spell ka-ching. And it's not just guys—Naomi Campbell looked gorgeously natural in the grand finale of Orientalia in her flowing kimono, shorts, and ballet flats. BTW, each of those closing outfits was arduously hand-inked: There's a new challenge for your dry cleaner. But what exactly was the assassin's pistol that appeared on a sweater meant to convey? Gun culture in any guise is unfashionable.
20 June 2008
Whatever else happens in Milan, you can count on Dolce & Gabbana to put on the glossiest high-production, total-conviction, proper old-school show in town. This season, they hit on a device for merging the feeling for longer lengths with tailoring and "country" fabrications: the midi-skirt moment, circa early-seventies London. A remix of David Bowie's greatest hits was on the soundtrack as the girls pounded out in curly haired gilets, flat caps, poor-boy sweaters, country-check shirts, printed silk scarves, and dozens of tweedy skirts, gathered into the waist and hitting at mid-calf.As a summary of trends that have been simmering since New York, it was polished and amusing—and if the girth-expanding potential of those skirts posed a worry, no matter. For one thing, Domenico Dolce, the child of a Sicilian tailor, has another excellent offer up his sleeve—the latest cut of the house pantsuit: neat, three-pieced, and skinny-legged. It looked good. And then there's the romance. That emerged onto the scene in fur-printed chiffon blouses, skirts, and puffer jackets, and ended up with the now-traditional set piece of the Dolce & Gabbana crinoline parade. This time they were whipped out of a combination of pale chiffon and random overlayerings of fur and bolts of British tailoring fabric, a sort of funnyta-da!of all the themes, seasonal and personal, that the designers had managed to weave into the performance. As a whole, the show hit the right note for the times—toned down, but not depressing. And whether you'd actually buy into it or not, the sheer breadth of the repertoire Dolce & Gabbana has made its own—jeans to leather jackets, suits to gowns and accessories—is a spectacle that deserves a cheery salute.
20 February 2008
The backdrop was gold-swagged velvet drapes, and the Stones were singing "She's a Rainbow." In other words, a snapshot from London's late-sixties haute bohemia. Then out strolled a gigantic sheepskin coat, tailor-made for a superstar helicopter drop at the Isle of Wight Festival circa 1970. Except for one not-so-minor detail: It was paired with cashmere-knit sweatpants. And thus did Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana introduce one of the most successfully idiosyncratic collisions of twentieth-century dress-up and twenty-first-century dress-down that Milan has seen in recent memory. Try a houndstooth hoodie on for size—and expect it to be generous. With the exception of a closing passage of pared-to-the-bone eveningwear (narrow-collared shirts, skinny ties, lapel-less waistcoats), the duo pumped up the volume with extravagantly oversized shearlings and jumbo sweaters, often teamed with ankle-ribbed pants. The result was an irresistible combination of glamour and comfort. If some of Dolce & Gabbana's recent menswear collections have occasionally felt like they were treading water, this one tapped into the enthusiasm of their early reputation-makers. The fabrics (jersey, corduroy, velvet) and the rustic touches (breeches, riding pants, tweed and houndstooth as favored fabrics) had a gutsy energy, amplified by styling flourishes like flat caps and ikat scarves. The passage of time has bequeathed Dolce & Gabbana a level of craftsmanship that produces leather blousons with circular patchwork, or trousers cut from a frontier-ready mouton. Sure, there's an almost parodic over-the-topness about such items, but in today's tremulous fashion climate, it's nice to know they exist.
11 January 2008
As editors, buyers, socialites, and a movie star or two swirled about Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana's renovated Madison Avenue boutique at lunchtime on Monday, the designers took a break from all the air kisses to talk about the pre-fall collection that was displayed on mannequins throughout the new three-floor space. "It's about what people need in the moment," said Dolce. "Party dresses inspired by orchids for early summer; D&G classics with a new style and volume for our new markets, like Japan; and gray everyday clothes," for, well, everyday. Practical though all this may have been compared with their runway collections, the designers did offer a nod to Spring's extravagant paint-splattered confections: Among the line's highlights was a pair of softly gathered day dresses draped in acid-bright tulle.
2 December 2007
There's something fabulous about the energy of a Dolce & Gabbana show when they let loose their bouncy, celebratory Italianate love of women and fashion. For Spring, they recaptured that freshness in a virtuoso performance that showed them at their very best: blowing modernity into fifties romance and loading their unique culture into accessible clothing.It was their starting point that let in the air: the idea of freehand painting, which they introduced in a video of young artists splashing broad brush streaks and flowers on bolts of fabric. The designers had been set off, they said, by seeing Julian Schnabel's work in the baroque-contemporary setting of the Gramercy Park Hotel. Back in Milan, they took it further, starting with pale brushstrokes on parchment canvas, cut into an opening sequence of crinolined dresses, caban coats, and a great reiteration of their signature flared trousers. From there, the show became ever more confident, drawing on the cache of experience the duo have stored up over years: It had corseting, inserted into some beautiful covered-up shift dresses; tailoring, seen in oversize brocade tux jackets; and jewel-colored Venetian cut velvets covered with a veiling of tulle. By the end, Dolce & Gabbana had ticked all the boxes of trend—transparency, fairylike silhouettes, a nod to the seventies, and a grand finale of painted organza fifties-fantasy ball gowns—without wavering from their own heartland for a second. Bravo.
26 September 2007
Always on the prowl for glamour, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana found it in Africa for resort. While some pieces looked like straight-up trekking gear—in finer material—others were given a fashion twist. A khaki mini, for instance, came with not only utility pockets but also an au courant bubble hem. The house's signature leopard made its requisite appearance, of course, but in addition there was a cheery Mary Quant-style daisy print. Cocktail numbers, meanwhile, were festooned with dolce vita ribbons, flowers, and diamond-bright crystals.
25 June 2007
The soundtrack for Dolce & Gabbana's presentation was Timbaland, but the inspiration looked like purest Timberlake: the shaved-headed models, the young urban take on dressing up, the overall edge. Domenico and Stefano smartly acknowledged the way that contemporary menswear merges day and night by running their show back to front. They opened with a formal look—tuxedo-striped pants, shawl-collared jackets, contrast lapels—and closed (finale aside) with a blouson and combats in linen all scrunched up in the curious twenty-first-century Stone Age effect they used in their last women's collection. In between came a typically catholic collection of items that covered the ever-widening Dolce & Gabbana waterfront: from a white linen jacket that offered one of the season's more appealing takes on menswear's evolving see-through kick, to a pair of denim clamdiggers that, teamed with a floral shirt, hinted at one half of the design duo's long-standing affection for hippie chic.The final march-past of mannequins all sported white orchids in the breast pockets of their evening suits, but that romantic flourish was less intriguing than the show's use of technology. Screens suspended over the catwalk featured aMinority Report-style forensic look at the proceedings, and one passage of combat-inspired clothing was illuminated by LED-like hardware, an arresting way for the modern attention junkie to feed his habit.
22 June 2007
Welcome to the Dolce e Gabbana dungeon. It¿s a black padded cell in which a posse of amazons stands frozen in classic lesbian S&M poses, silver spanking crops at the ready. This is the tableau that turned on a dais at the end of the runway in the Metropol theater, the venue in which the designers installed themselves last year. Trust the transgressive ebullience of Dolce & Gabbana to bring up sex and in-your-face glamour. Forget the fact that most everyone else has their heads down concentrating on modesty and sobriety—these two have never had any truck with that. And neither, frankly, has the massive customer base they¿ve built: Their billion-dollar turnover says so.The show was one major performance, with wave after wave of metallic bustier dresses, hard-corseted belts, metal eye masks, latex-look dresses, see-through lace, studded coats—a veritable catalog of the kind of porn-chic material pioneered by Madonna in herSexbook of the early nineties (and it was she, indeed, who was pantingEroticon the sound track). The vice device didn¿t totally obscure the fact that this collection did have a day base untouched by kink. There was a great, mannish-shouldered pantsuit and luscious coats—including a puffy satin parka—in there, and an excellent pair of the season¿s high-waisted seventies pants that were testament to Domenico Dolce¿s inimitable cutting skills.After a while, of course, the theme took over, especially during the long buildup to the finale of no less than 13 crystal-mesh gowns, some of them giving a clear view to the underwear. This has become a seasonal ritual by now. It has undoubtedly established Dolce & Gabbana as the biggest, flashiest show on the Milan calendar, and its publicity will penetrate parts of the media that could care less about fashion. You have to hand it to them for that. But there¿s something about designing to fill the podium of this new theater-auditorium that can be distancing to the fashion-sensitive. Some are beginning to pine for the intimacy of the days when Dolce & Gabbana would pitch a tent outside their home, invite people in, settle them down with a snack and a drink, and let them enjoy watching Gisele et al. cavorting at eye level, while inspecting every stitch of what they do so well. If they could recapture some of that, everyone would be happy.
21 February 2007
The emergence of a trio of pristine, white-clad astronauts on Dolce & Gabbana's catwalk to the strains of Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (better known as the theme from2001: A Space Odyssey) made for one of the more memorable fashion-show intros in recent memory. And the grandiosity of the notion somehow dovetailed with pop culture's current elevation of the everyday hero. The fact that it also lockstepped with Justin Timberlake (on the soundtrack, at least) only amplified the analogy. Domenico and Stefano have always traded in traditional masculine archetypes, but with this collection they seemed to be pushing those archetypes into the future (and not just because there were elements in the show as specifically fashion-futuristic as metallics and iridescents).Their evolution had more to do with a general tightening up of their core aesthetic: Where once their denims might have featured some artful distressing, here they were indigo-dyed, bandbox-smart, and paired with rigorously tailored blazers. And DG's signature male glamour was richer but more subtle than usual, at its best in a leather blouson glazed with gold. The finale (introduced by a reappearance of those astronauts, this time in silver) featured a passage of suits in metallic silk shantung—copper, bronze, gold. We know the boys love movies. Here, they offered their own distinctive hybrid of Stanley Kubrick's future and David Lynch's eternal, darkly erotic present.
13 January 2007
Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce are advancing into fall with Napoleonic zeal—literally. At the start of their show, a tableau of hussars and Empire beauties rose into view on a revolving plinth, arranged around a ceremonial black monolith emblazoned with the Emperor's laurels. The Napoleonic codebook gave them all the historical ammunition they needed to cut a swath through current themes: the play between masculine and feminine; the baroque flourishes; the rich velvets and antique golds; the swaggering capes and high-collar shirts. Naturally, they also had carte blanche to do things with raised-waist dresses, the Empire line pioneered by Josephine herself.Military tailcoats, cut in shearling, along with tight knickers and jodhpurs with high riding boots marched out, followed by legions of coats in brown and beige, all detailed with gold buttons or leather straps and brass hardware transplanted from saddlery. These designers have always loved a baby-doll, and this season's are their most sumptuous yet—lovely little puff-sleeve things in eau de nil, emerald, and vibrant red velvet or old-gold brocade. Streaks of silver paint glinted in the gathers of one; others had bands of gold-thread military embroidery circling bosoms; yet another was held up with an imperial-medal chain.It's fair to point out that none of this is necessarily fresh territory in fashion (John Galliano, for one, has staked it out before). Yet DolceeGabbana applied such intense workmanship here that they engraved their own signature on the plot (note the gold crown placed above the D&G initials on bags and T-shirts).The triumphal mood culminated in a velvet-slippered procession of court ladies straight out ofThe Coronation of Napoleon in Notre Dame, the 1804 painting by David that hangs in the Louvre. Tucked among the sheer, gem- and pearl-embroidered numbers, there were two extraordinary gowns with skirts made of layered feathers—one painted to look like leopard spots, the other gilded with antique gold. These qualified as top trophies in the Dolce & Gabbana campaign to dominate the red carpet.
22 February 2006
Forza Dolce. The program notes touted the Dolce & Gabbana style as being the dominant global aesthetic for menswear, and the fact that they now have their own theater in which to present their shows lends an added grandiosity to their presentations. So New Power—the name that Domenico and Stefano gave their latest collection—was, in their eyes, not a boast, but a simple acknowledgment of the strength and confidence that such huge success can bestow. To their credit, though, the boys didn't coast. Those signature low-slung, butt-cupping trousers arrived with four deep-stitched pleats, which created a new volume. And the broad-shouldered, nipped-waist jackets that are equally characteristic of the Dolce & Gabbana man were less structured.Even more surprisingly, there was a properness to this collection that was positively Mittel Europa. It was seductively present in a handful of velvet suits (heathery purple, silvery gray, olive-green, brick-red, and blue), but it also showed up in vintage-looking, side-buckled leather jackets. The brocaded military jackets in the finale had a distinct Austro-Hungarian edge. And the tails shown with white shirts and black velvet scarves tied high round the neck were a vision of scrupulous Georgian elegance.
15 January 2006
A pouting bevy of bosomy senorinas, squeezed into red lace and gingham corsetry, is rising out of the floor into a Sicilian barn as a lonely farmhand looks on, trying to restrain his goats. This was the romantic-gone-utterly-kitsch keynote for Dolce & Gabbana's triumphal 20th-anniversary celebration: one big outrageous roll in the hay with the boys, for old time's sake.With straw stuck in their hair, the girls worked their way through endless costume changes on the themes of frilly red, white, and black eyelet and not-so-innocent country-girl gingham. Shapes ran riot with the duo's standard push-up lingerie engineering—bursting out into big petticoated fifties skirts and teetering vertiginously on their signature wedges and platforms. Meanwhile, lest we lose the plot, the story was heavily embroidered with poppy and wheat field embellishments.In European culture, the wheat ear is a talisman auguring good fortune. Well, it's worked for Dolce and Gabbana. Strolling hand in hand along the runway in the former Metropol theater they've just bought, surrounded by a crush of models in vast operatic crinolines, they looked like they were inwardly shouting, "We did it!" It's a long way from the rented walkup in which they cut and sewed their first collection in 1985, so they deserve their one-night binge of triumph. As for the collection? It was less a retrospective than the theatrical opener for a big party. A pity they forgot to showcase their signature sharp tailoring and white shirts in the frilly melee, but never mind this one time. Pop open the Champagne for the boys.
28 September 2005
A Dolce & Gabbana show is now such a reliable proposition that you can practically close your eyes and predict what's next. This may not be such a great thing for an audience looking for a kick-start in the outlandish heat of Milan's summer (especially with the amphetamine pace of the show draining any remaining oxygen from the air), but Domenico and Stefano's giant global audience will undoubtedly be reassured to learn that the boys are sticking to their successful formula. So spring 2006 offered another day in the life of a Dolce man: the lethal mean-business tailoring (with jacket waists now so suppressed it's a wonder they don't rise up in rebellion); the embroidered denims slung oh-so-low, distressed to within an inch of their lives and worn with campy T-shirts (Pepsi and Portofino!); the selection of sexy workout clothes (a Fight Club motif dominated this season); and the closing tableau of eveningwear (this time completely in white).All of the above was mounted on the pneumatically masculine silhouette that is the Dolce & Gabbana signature, so it was something of a surprise to hear a post-show Stefano say that the duo had the androgynous rakes of London's New Rock Wave on their minds when they were designing—in particular, Mr. Kate Moss's band Babyshambles. If Pete Doherty were truly to rock Dolce & Gabbana's world, then we might see some real thrills.
26 June 2005
Dolce & #38; Gabbana's fall show featured a double take: Was that Chloë Sevigny in the belted fur-trimmed coat, looking out from under her bouffant mane? It certainly was, busy channeling Jean Shrimpton. This was confirmed by the walls backstage, which were papered with copies of David Bailey's photographs of the Shrimp taken forVoguebetween '61 and '64, when the two were a hot item.The designers described their collection—full of minis and maxis, boxy jackets, Beatles caps, and tall furry hats reminiscent of the Buckingham Palace guards—as "La Dolce Vitameets Swinging London." But without knowing all that, you'd have been forgiven for thinking you'd blundered into a groovy furrier's show. Dolce & Gabbana kept pretty faithful to the outline of the youthquake moment as it might have been seen from Italy—a viewpoint that encompassed both English tweeds andalta modaflowered dresses. But there was never, ever this much fur around in '64. The duo didn't just use it in a regular way on coats, like a Shrimpton-esque Mongolian lamb and a floor-sweeping white mink; they lavished broadtail almost everywhere, as if it were fabric. A black minidress and matching coat were only the starters: After that, there were two-tone boxy suits and narrow skirts with contrast banding picked out in fur, and trims applied everywhere.To top all that, the show crescendoed with the label's familiar parade of Oscar gowns—this season done in white and silver, the girls standing on the mirrored runway all a-twinkle and aquiver with Austrian crystal and exotically sculpted feathers.
25 February 2005
Dolce & Gabbana's fall show was both a celebration and a satire of the obsessive pursuits of the modern male—from physical fitness to professional success to sexual satisfaction.The presentation played like a day in the life. First up, outfits for every gym-based activity: running, boxing, swimming, working out. Next, pinstripes for the office, with appropriately serious heavy-framed glasses and a broad-shouldered, nipped-waist silhouette to broadcast the body beautiful beneath. Then came playtime, Dolce & Gabbana style, with the duo's artfully distressed denims now paint-splattered for added aesthetic appeal, or packed with khaki combat details, under shaggilysauvageshearlings. Eveningwear, which dressed up those denims with tuxedo jackets and crystal-studded superhero T-shirts, was followed by a cavalcade of bare-chested Dolce boys in more jeans, hip-slung to highlight the "belt of Apollo"—that part of the anatomy that only Brad Pitt, male models, and the most-ardent gym buff seem able to maintain. (No coincidence that "Proud Mary" played on the soundtrack during this sequence.)The red-carpet finale—maroon velvet tux, white dinner jacket, black satin ties with glittering tiepins—had an exuberant disco vulgarity. But that's what unifies and makes such a success of all these disparate statements: unabashed exuberance, with tongue placed firmly in cheek.
15 January 2005
By a poignant coincidence, the news of Richard Avedon's death reached Milan just as Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were referencing the great photographer's work for their spring collection. "Avedon for the beauty, and Penn for Africa," said Gabbana, gesturing toward a collage of seventies glamazons (Iman, Kelly LeBrock, Lauren Hutton, Rosie Vela, and Brooke Shields) torn fromVogueand pinned on the wall backstage.Their key image must surely have been that famous photo of the naked Nastassja Kinski entwined with a snake. There was scarcely a single outfit in the entire collection that didn't involve python. It began with Naomi Campbell in a reptilian corset dress, with arms and neck full of tribal-deluxe metal jewelry simultaneously signaling Africa. That idea progressed into a vast continent of python-smothered outfits, from trenchcoats to Coco-esque jackets to jeans and evening gowns, not to mention boots, bangles, and minibags that swung from every available belt loop.In their African theme, Dolce & Gabbana also struck on the current Milanese taste for raffia fringe and feathers (quail fluff on a blouson, exotic green plumes as a skirt, quills to create a hip-slung mini.) Along the way, they managed to work in their personal penchant for lingerie, inserting lace into denim and splicing it into the kick-pleats of a python skirt. There was the occasional signature pantsuit (now with a puff-sleeved jacket) and, of course, the usual tableau of major evening gowns for a grand finale.
30 September 2004
Imagine Marcello Mastroianni at a pool party wherela vitagets sodolcethat the dressed-up male guests strip down to bathing suits—suits so immodest that Naomi Campbell's rhinestone-studded thong looks decorous by comparison. (Sprinkled among the studs on the catwalk, she and a handful of other female models were showing off Dolce & Gabbana's new resort line.) The contrast between bodies dressed and bodies bared gave a racy edge to a collection that was otherwise curiously formal for the D&G duo: sober-toned suits and jackets galore, striped shirts with white collars and cuffs, tuxedo-striped trousers, and an overload of navy, often paired with white.The label's signature sensuality seeped through in fine-gauge knits open to the navel, revealing ten-packs sheened with sweat (it was 100-plus degrees outside in Milan). And a salute to Hawaii in palm-and-hibiscus-embroidered jeans had that fearlessly camp quality we expect from these designers. But even the presence on the catwalk of a baby tiger couldn't disguise the fact that Dolce & Gabbana just took a walk on the mild side.
26 June 2004
After last season's print-on-print delirium, this collection—an ode to the iconic images of the late, very great photographer Helmut Newton—was a remarkably sober offering from Dolce & Gabbana. But in the hands of Domenico and Stefano, of course, sobriety is a relative concept; there was no shortage of razzle-dazzle and built-in wardrobe malfunction.Like Newton in the seventies and eighties, the boys presented a woman who was ultra-chic, groomed, powerful—and ripe for sexual misadventure. Small wonder that pride of place in the audience was reserved for Fanny Ardant, the agelessly beautiful French actress and sometime Newton subject, striking in the designers' shapely white pencil-skirt power suit. Or that the amazonian Nadja Auermann, another Newton favorite, strode the runway, more svelte and dramatic than ever.Many of Newton's strongest pictures from this period feature the clothes of Saint Laurent (that's Yves, not Tom, for those with fashion-history deficit disorder), and there were several explicit, if playful, homages to that Parisian master—from the deep-green boxy fox chubby to the prim-but-sexy chiffon-and-lace full-sleeved cocktail frocks to an evening parade of skinny satin or velvet tuxedo pantsuits with a flash of lacy camisole beneath. Perhaps—prior to any official pronouncement about Tom Ford's replacement chez Saint Laurent—Messrs. Dolce and Gabbana are auditioning for the role?In the meantime, they are having plenty of fun in Milan, subverting old-fashioned elegance with their own brand of highly sexed style. Even in a season of luxe effects, their fox-cuffed short evening coat, solid with diamond and topaz crystal beading and fit for a latter-day Marlene Dietrich, was eye-poppingly glamorous. Inventive notions included simply chic sweaters and satin shell tops garlanded with trompe l'oeil embroidered necklaces, houndstooth skirts inset with godets of naughty black lace, and a formal black coat that flashed open to reveal a lingerie slip beneath. As the girls—including Elvis' angelic granddaughter Riley Keough, in demure black velvet—clustered on the orchid-pink leatherette banquettes of the Regine's-inspired disco set, one model sped past in a high-neck, long-sleeve black lace gown that looked conservative enough for Mrs. Bush. Until she turned her back, revealing the sheer, unlined lace back that flashed an emerald-green bra and panty set. Perfect for the next Super Bowl.
28 February 2004
Let's start with the ending, since it was so great: a stage full of sparkly, colorful, drop-dead Hollywood gowns, the likes of which most designers in Italy have neglected to mention this season. Beyoncé Knowles, in the front row of Dolce & Gabbana's Spring show, hyperventilated at the sight of Naomi Campbell swinging around in a mini showgirl number done entirely in spangled strands. "Oh, I'd like the occasion to wear that!" she exclaimed afterward.The rest of the going was just as good, a lighthearted tiptoe through a myriad of fifties- and sixties-era summertime references. Lilly Pulitzer-meets-Pucciesque period prints (with a bit of pop art thrown in) came jumbled up in a melee of little suits, lace coats, and gorgeous georgette beaded cardigans. But don't expect ladylike from the D&G boys. Their girls can't live without the opportunity to show some leg (preferably smothered in printed tights), and when they get into those curvy, lacy dresses, it's safe to assume their flowery underwear will find a way to flash out somehow.Still, this is a lightened-up collection in one sense. Gone were the aggressive, punkish, oversexed elements Dolce & Gabbana often throws into a show. (Even the signature black corsetry has been retired for the summer, turning up only as a token in crystal bands on pink.) They weren't missed. What's left is a slew of delicious separates that fit perfectly into the realm of pretty individualism everyone will be aiming for next summer.
2 October 2003
Dolce & Gabbana idolizes supermodel royalty, and their show had a roster full: Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Amber Valletta and Eva Herzigova were all there, underscoring the longevity of a look the designers first established in the late ’80s. Evangelista opened the show in a bright tangerine parka slung over one of the duo's signature pieces, the black corset dress. It was a combo that stated a general theme, which Stefano Gabbana described as "techno romance."That meant that pop color—acid yellow, orange, emerald and royal blue—flashed through the collection in shoes, bags and down jackets laden with utility straps and clips. But even if they play up an effervescent moment with details like necklaces made of bottle tops or CDs, or a shot of brash gold lamé, these guys know better than to neglect what they do best. Year after year Dolce & Gabbana's mannish suits and shapely dresses keep women coming back, and they'd never let a passing trend distract from that.In a season when menswear is a rising trend, Dolce & Gabbana's pantsuits and shirting looked bang-on relevant. They redrafted the proportions to create new shoulder volume, sometimes slipping a pinstripe bolero or a jacket cut like a kimono over waist-clinching tailoring. White shirts looked great tied with a flourish in front to reemphasize the expert tease of their masculine/feminine styling.For evening, they issued updates on the corset-tight sheaths they've been doing forever, one in a ruched satin rose print, another in black lace, followed by a finale of enough showgirl fringed sparkle and spangled nude tulle to dress the entire cast ofChicago.This is a collection celebrating house classics. And no wonder: Dolce & Gabbana have just opened a whole new business, here at 26 Via della Spiga, devoted to selling remade editions of their greatest vintage hits.
1 March 2003
The glamazons were out in force at Dolce & Gabbana. Eva Herzigova, Naomi Campbell, Amber Valletta, Stephanie Seymour and Gisele Bündchen blasted into the room, walking proof that power-womanhood is not extinct on planet Fashion. And what do these ultra-women wear? Dolce & Gabbana—who are at their best when turning women into stars. This season's collection laid out the full repertoire.The list of influences is rather disparate—astronauts, Paco Rabanne, Sid Vicious, sailors and ancient Rome. Don’t worry too much about how all that hangs together. They were merely the channels for the line's enduring themes: curvaceous dresses, hourglass suits, masculine and feminine tailoring, amazing embellished coats and jeans.The punk idea brought out S&M crisscross lacing in the satin corseted dresses, straps and buckles on trousers, a new oversize jacket in the house's signature mannish suits, and heavy studwork on leather jackets and bags. Space-age was a way to work silver (Milan’s current favorite) as zippered foil coats, jackets and pants, while M. Rabanne got a nod by way of jackets made from bands of chinchilla and chain mail. The most uplifting moment, though, was the sight of Ms. Seymour in a shirred, black jersey dress, looking like an ’80s-era sex-on-legs goddess. It was just like old times, in more ways than one. The dress turned out to be Dolce & Gabbana’s own—vintage.
28 September 2002
For Fall 2002, Dolce & Gabbana conducted a tour through their fashion heartland, pointing out everything they do best and romancing an idea Stefano Gabbana calls "rustic glamor."For country lovers of the high-heeled-wearing kind, the design duo suggested sexy cords, beautiful handcrafted suede coats, Peruvian ponchos, chunky fur scarves and any number of fabulous outsize shoulder bags made of fringed wool and woven leather. Dolce & Gabbana's signature masculine-feminine three-piece pantsuits looked classic yet freshly relevant, with their sharp tailoring and flattering vests (an item that's shooting up the Fall fashion charts). They also showed hip-slung bootleg or low-rider baggy cords, lingerie tops and a zillion desirable accessories—rope belts, long fringed scarves, stacks of gold bangles and bracelets and delicious boots and shoes—all corralled from a huge range of countrified textures and fabrics in shades of brown and cream.Of course, no peasant maid would ever wear a thigh-high flirty skirt with a streetwise brown corduroy jacket bristling with buckled poacher-pockets. Or pick her way through fields in pale suede boots patterned in nail-head studs. But that's the genius of this label—total devotion to the cause of gorgeousness whatever terrain fashion happens to be passing through at the time.
2 March 2002
Who better to embody Dolce & Gabbana's vision of high-intensity glamour than Victoria Beckham, formerly known as Posh Spice? In her fitted top-stitched suit, oversize aviators, driving cap, spike heels and net gloves (over which was slipped a candy-sized diamond ring), Mrs. Beckham made the perfect front-row celebutante for this full-on show.Posh surely found plenty to catch her silver-accented eye: Dolce & Gabbana offered everything from perfectly tailored jackets and elephant-leg trousers to corseted frocks and ultra-feminine lace-inset dresses (worn with skimpy cardigan wraps thrown over the shoulders and tied in the front). The upbeat collection escalated into an explosion of color that included eye-popping flower-print chiffon dresses, woven ribbon jackets and miniskirts, and suede jeans with purple, gold, lavender and red leather insets. The absolute standout was a short parakeet-print dress in jungle shades, worn with a multihued woven belt and a pink-and-green carrier purse.Accessories, anyone? Major statements included a metallic logo belt, gold D and G pendants, and a dangling set of earrings that spelled out—what else?—"Dolce" and "Gabbana."
29 September 2001
A moss-covered stone water fountain, flowery arches and floors strewn with autumn leaves left no doubt: Romance was in the air at Dolce & Gabbana. But needless to say, the Italian duo's idea of gracious country life is far from sedate.From a wooden farmhouse emerged glamorous desert bohemians clad in extra-long hip-hugging, double-belted distressed leather pants, billowy striped tops and dangling fox tails. The vintage feeling continued with fitted corduroy trousers and oversize blazers, flea-market suede and fur jackets, and tattered blue jeans. Dolce and Gabbana clearly had a blast mixing the old and the new; slouchy pants and oversize hobo sweaters and scarves alternated with sheer floral camisoles, sharp military coats with multiple diamanté buckles, Wild West fringed bags and tall prairie boots. In a nutshell: anything and everything a sensible girl could possibly need.
2 March 2001
With a backdrop of dainty, blossoming trees, strewn roses, lace curtains and a spanking-white little Topolino car, glitzy glamour met power-dressing at Dolce & Gabbana.Smart, fitted black suits brought to mindRoman Holidaychic when worn with impenetrable sunglasses. Strap-back bustiers, "Addicted to Love" body-hugging jersey dresses and sexy pencil skirts looked sharp and severe, as did the sheer black shirts. But those who rely on Dolce & Gabbana for over-the-top glitter and shine will not be disappointed—there were plenty of beaded, ravaged jeans held together with safety pins, bold-colored leather motorcycle jackets, sequin-drenched shirts and colorfully printed, voluminous skirts. Die-hard fans who remember the designers' long-time relationship with the Material Girl will definitely want to collect the new series of kitschy, heavily beaded Madonna T-shirts.
4 October 2000
Looking for dazzle? Leave it to Dolce & Gabbana to supply a jolt of show-stopping glamour. Inspired by the Middle East, the duo's collection featured everything from gold tapestry-printed dresses to silver palazzo pants to glimmering, striped Lurex T-shirts. Even their interpretation of the current suit craze was appropriately glitzy: there were purple velvet knicker-and-jacket combos and three-piece corduroy riding ensembles with rhinestone-covered berets. How to top off the look? Try a patchwork shearling coat, a colorfully decorated fur or a shiny croc jacket with leopard-print lining and matching hat. If you need still more flash, you can always go for the hoop earrings, bright tights and flower-appliquéd shoes.
23 February 2000
Dolce & Gabbana are determined to party like it's 1999 for as long as they can, and are sparing no resources to do so. A typical look from their runway included a paisley-print transparent top, embroidered tapestry microskirt with oversized diamanté buckle, leopard tights, jewel-fringed boots and a glittering choker. For those who need a little something extra, there were also plenty of polka-dotted chiffon shirts, flapper tops and skirts, oversize fur hats and bags, beaded ties and buckets of rhinestones. Not satisfied? Slip into their teetering platform shoes, throw on a bejeweled bikini and top it off with a slouchy suit with shimmery appliqués. That should do the trick!
29 September 1999
Dolce & Gabbana’s spring 1993 collection was shown on October 4, 1992, in Milan.On a rainy Sunday in Milan police were called to keep the crowds under control outside of the venue where Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana would present their spring 1993 collection. Though still a relatively new brand, the duo was known for casting supermodels on the runway and in their marvelous Steven Meisel–lensed ad campaigns, and this season the likes of Cindy, Naomi, and Linda all turned up to walk. The Material Girl Madonna herself was also in town and attended the show, much to the delight of the paparazzi.MadonnaPhoto: Condé Nast ArchiveDressed in a pinstripe suit accessorized with a beret and spectacles, Madonna channeled both Bonnie and Clyde, but the vibe on the runway might be described as patchouli-scented Grand Tour. Though some models were dressed like dandies and pirates, the prevailing aesthetic was “rich hippie.” Botticelli paintings were collaged together and covered in pearls; Liberty-style florals were appliquéd with lace; hats dripped with feathers; and sari fabrics were used for suiting.In New York thespring 1993 seasonis remembered for grunge, which built on the alt-American music scene in Seattle. Dolce & Gabbana’s happy potpourri of influences was similarly eclectic but had roots in Europe and touched on high art and rustic traditions. And it spoke to nostalgic and escapist longings. Writing inVoguein 1992, Kate Betts stated that as “war rages a mere whistle-stop away in Bosnia, and governments in Europe, plagued by scandal and corruption, fall apart, it’s no coincidence that fashion is in a state of upheaval too. ‘In Italy now, everyone wants change; we want something clean and innocent,’ explained Gabbana.”Twenty-eight years on, Dolce and Gabbana riffed on this spring 1993 collection as they prepared their new one forspring 2021. The world is again in turmoil, and change is at the top of the global agenda. This time around there is comfort in the pair’s patching of fabric and in the knitting together of past and present.
23 September 2020