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 were fashion 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.
There’s much about this centuries-old religion that is multiple choice for millions of semi-believers who were baptized into it. Dolce & Gabbana’s article of belief, with this show, is that they can preach it—or rather their bible of style—to peoples of all denominations, and none. Well, they’ve proved it.
The star millennial and Gen Z guests at this show were from everywhere—China, the Middle East, and aristo-England. Something about the upcoming Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute exhibition on Catholicism and fashion had opened the floodgates for the Dolce & Gabbana religious celebrations—but, then again, that’s nothing new. The contradiction between crucifixes and corsets has been embedded in Dolce & Gabbana’s DNA since Madonna was a girl—and that was before any Gen Zer was ever dreamt of.
They attend enthusiastically to the tastes of kids these days. There was a point when this show’s oversize, Virgin Mary icon–embroidered sweatshirts, slogans, and appliqués reading Queen of My Life went quite off the religious track, speaking to their baby converts of many nations.
Shall we say it was good or bad? Funnily enough, under the canopy of Catholicism, both possibilities are allowed. Really beautiful, tailored, sophisticated trouser suits and coats were on the “tasteful” side; the really blingy stuff on the other. But those Communion handbag drones, though? There’s always confession.
