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.
