“Seeing that made me feel old for the first time,” said the editor in chief of Italian GQ, 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 to be the 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.
