Following a tumultuous weekend dominated by coronavirus panic, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana finished Milan on a grace note, with a celebration of the artisans they depend upon to make so many of their clothes. Black-and-white videos of il calzolaio (the shoemaker), la sarta (the seamstress), la magliaia (the knitter), la tessitrice (the weaver), la cravattaia (the tie maker), and more played on video screens, and in the Metropol’s foyer artigiani sat at work benches and posed with guests. “It’s very Italian, like the menswear,” Gabbana said of the collection in a preview. “It’s a tribute through our eyes to tradition.”
One way or another, Italian tradition is what Dolce and Gabbana are always celebrating, but this collection had a sweeter affect than usual for all its handcrafts. The designers described sending out their sketches to home knitters and crocheters all over Italy and being stunned by the finesse with which their designs were realized. Pointing to the curving waist and hips of a crochet bra and briefs, Dolce said, “It’s not like cutting fabric with scissors.” He continued: “This was a beautiful experiment for the whole company, these knitters were teaching us.”
This embrace of artisanship is reverberating across fashion. It’s a reaction as much to our turbulent (dystopian?) times as to our tech addictions. “Obviously we love sexy,” Gabbana said, “but it felt too aggressive in this moment. We wanted to take life in a more soft way, more intimate.” And so, bejeweled satin evening sandals shared the runway with hand-knit house slippers, and the easy-wearing house robe was reinterpreted in a myriad of ways: in crochet, in a lofty shearling lookalike that was actually a knit, and in an ultra-soft menswear alpaca whose oversized proportions were lifted from a circa-late-1980s Dolce & Gabbana menswear show. Those look like more innocent times, don’t they?
At 121 looks—and five Amy Winehouse songs—this collection was heavy on knits. The structured retort to all the softness was the menswear tailoring. Dolce and Gabbana are always keeping il sarto and la sarta busy; the difference this season was how boyish the tailoring was, a sensibility accentuated by the newsboy caps and ties that accompanied many of the looks. In the end, though, the push and pull of masculine and feminine tipped in the femme’s direction. Even still, thanks to its artisanal origins this was a surprisingly and refreshingly gentle Dolce & Gabbana collection. Credit to both of them for somehow intuiting that it was just what we needed.