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Design duo Domenico Dolce (b. 1958, near Palermo,
Sicily) and Stefano Gabbana (b.1962, Milan, Italy) are known for making
"stars look like stars". Their sexy styles are often to be seen on the
likes of Isabella Rossellini, Demi Moore, Nicole Kidman and Madonna,
for whom they created the now-famous "Kylie Minogue" tribute T-shirt.
They also created the costumes for Madonna's Girlie Show in 1993, as
well as Whitney Houston's 1999 tour.
Partners both in life and
in business, the pair met while working as assistants in an atelier in
Milan. Sharing a love of the baroque, they made their name together in
1985, when the organisers of the Milano Collezioni invited them to take
part in a fashion show to launch "New Talents". The following year,
they presented their first independent women's ready-to-wear show.
Since then, they have introduced menswear and a line of signature
fragrances, and opened shops in Italy, Japan, Hong Kong and, in 1999,in
London (the London salon, designed by British architect David
Chipperfield, is testament to the designers' love of mixing their own
Mediterranean spirit with English eccentricity).
Originally
inspired by eclectic, thrift shop Bohemia, Dolce & Gabbana's deeply
coloured, animal prints have been described as "haute hippydom" taking
inspiration in particular from Italy's prestigious film history. "When
we design it's like a movie," says Domenico Dolce. "We think of a story
and we design the clothes to go with it." They claim to be more
concerned about creating the best, most flattering clothes than
sparking trends, once admitting that they wouldn't mind if their only
contribution to fashion history was a black bra.
D&G
trademarks include underwear-as-outerwear (such as corsets and bra
fastenings), gangster boss pinstripe suits, extravagantly printed and
embroidered coats, and black. Meanwhile their fetish-meets-femininity
collections are always backed by powerful ad campaigns, like the
black-and-white La Sicilia, featuring model Marpessa photographed by
Ferdinando Scianna in 1987. But fundamentally they are known for making
women look, quite simply, devastatingly sexy. "They find their way out
of any black dress, any buttoned-up blouse," says Rossellini. "The
first piece of theirs I wore was a white shirt, very chaste, but cut to
make my breasts look as if they were bursting out of it."
Once
dubbed the "Gilbert and George of Italian fashion", Dolce and Gabbana
gave their fashion interests a musical turn in 1996, by recording their
own single, in which they intoned the words "D&G is love" over a
techno beat. Newer to the design game than other heavyweight Italian
fashion houses such as Versace and Armani, the pair acknowledge that
luck has played its part in their phenomenal success. By 1997, their
company reported a turnover of Ł400 million, prompting both designers
to announce that they planned to retire by the age of 40 - a promise
they happily did not keep. |
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