In 2009 Dolce & Gabbana became the first house to put “bloggers” (how quaint that word sounds now) in its front row—and even provided them with laptops. Then in 2015 the house invited a new wave of Insta/YouTube influencers led by Cameron Dallas. Today the dog-year clock of digital influence chimed again as Dolce & Gabbana threw open its doors to a house dressed bunch of wide-eyed and good-spirited Tik Tokers, many of whom were barely out of diapers when the first wave of bloggers (now well-established industry veterans) landed on Viale Piave. After this show, which was closed by a guy in a full look of tufted white knitwear who carried a beautiful little lamb from a farm just outside town, I asked some of these fresh arrivals how they’d liked their first ever show. “It was amazing!” came the answer in unison. And could this ancient, analogue form of fashion presentation translate to their hot-right-now platform? “Definitely!” Awww: they were nearly as cute as that lamb.
Call it artisanal influencing: Dolce & Gabbana has now passed down their first experience of front row fashion to three micro-generations of platform-defined digital denizens. This was only an aside to the collection but tangentially relevant to it. The show was named “The masters of art” and explored the dignity of labor, the value of craft, and the preciousness of skills that are handed down from generation to generation. In the foyer of the Metropol there were tailors, knitters, and shoemakers from Dolce’s staff doing their thing and stoutly ignoring the phones pointed their way. Around the runway was projected a grainy video of mostly Sicilian rural artisans carrying out their various family trades: basket-weaving, pasta making, carpentry, shepherding, weaving, barbering and more.
Before the show, Domenico Dolce took care to ensure certain garments bore the (albeit artificial) marks of hard labor. Taking a break from twisting and battering a pair of waxed and over-dyed taupe work trousers with the help of an assistant, he said: “For me it isn’t about fashion, it’s about style and identity, and this is something real that grows out of culture.” Stefano Gabbana added: “We want to show the new generation the beauty of these old jobs that have been passed from father to son and also to reflect that beauty in the collection.” This they did sometimes very literally. Certain models were dressed as handsome itinerant tradesmen—a florist, a watch-repairer, an artist, a shepherd (complete with crook and majorly shaggy sheepskin pants) and even an electrician. Around these literal landmarks came an onrush of artistically rendered interpretations of workwear, ruralwear, and businesswear (often punctuated by sling- and chain-borne bags).
The best pieces took the functional and agrarian inspirations behind the collection—the pockets, the hook and eyes, the volume—and used roughed vintage effect fabrics including pied-de-poule and tweeds to reimagine pre-mechanized workwear for a post-mechanized consumer. The wide whale corduroy pants (with treated technical buttoned combat pockets) in black or khaki that tightened dramatically from wide to narrow on their way down would have looked equally good tucked into the boots of a 19th-century kid or a 21st-century one.
As labors go this was a double-shift (116 looks in total) long enough to be soundtracked with five ’80s Italian songs—deep and soulful—by Franco Battiato and others. They only added to a from-the-heart show that felt authentically and unapologetically all-Italian and all-Dolce & Gabbana in both presentation and content, bar only a few concessionary subtitles added to acknowledge wider trends (the belted tailored jackets) and the international and newly Tik Tok-powered audience.
