The Dolce & Gabbana Spring 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 and Cameron 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?
