Ten cheers for ten years! - tenth anniversary of Dolce and Gabbana - Interview

A young Italian man named Dolce met another young Italian man whose name is Gabbana, and they got along famously. They had an intuitive sense that their combination was a recipe for survival and success in the world of fashion, which requires a heightened sense of taste and also tentacles out in all directions.

They teamed up, and thus began a fashion collaboration that has caused a lot of excitement. No wonder. They always have their feelers out to sense what's in and what's out, which after all is what fashion's all about. And it's also about change, a subject they embrace. Their attraction to change has led them to themes that are all about changing the rules and assumptions when it comes to fashion that's associated with rich and poor, night and day, work and play, and their big subject - men and women.

This fall marks ten years that Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have been mixing things up according to the hunger of the times. This tenth anniversary photo feature, plus the interview that closes it, gets to the heart of why these ten years of Dolce & Gabbana Collections, as well as their new D&G line, have brought them so many fans, both inside and outside the world of fashion.

* AUGUST 13, 1958: DOMENICO DOLCE IS BORN IN PALERMO, SICILY.

* NOVEMBER 14, 1962: STEFANO GABBANA IS BORN IN MILAN, ITALY.

* DOLCE AND GABBANA'S FAVORITE DUET: "I GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN" BY BONO AND FRANK SINATRA

* OCTOBER 1985: THE TEAM DEBUTS AT THE "NEW TALENT" FASHION SHOWS AT THE MILAN COLLECTIONS.

* DOLCE AND GABBANA WOULD LEAST LIKE TO DRESS: "THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE BORING OR DULL!"

* MARCH 1986: LAUNCH OF THE DOLCE & GABBANA WOMEN'S COLLECTION.

* JANUARY 1990: LAUNCH OF THE DOLCE & GABBANA MEN'S COLLECTION.

* THE PIECE OF CLOTHING DOLCE AND GABBANA WOULD CRY OVER IF IT WERE MISSING FROM THEIR CLOSET: "A PIN-STRIPED SUIT, WHETHER FOR A MAN OR A WOMAN."

* JANUARY 1994: LAUNCH OF THE D&G MEN'S COLLECTION. MARCH 1994: LAUNCH OF THE D&G WOMEN'S COLLECTION.

* WHILE DESIGNING THE FALL/WINTER 1985/1996 COLLECTIONS, DOLCE AND GABBANA LISTENED TO: "GREEN DAY - THEY GAVE US A SENSE OF MOVEMENT AND SPEED."

Ten tips to what's made this twosome tick for the last ten years

INTERVIEW: One. What's the key word?

DOMENICO DOLCE: Freedom.

STEFANO GABBANA: It is something that we always love to explore. It interests us a lot, and we always work with it in mind.

DD: You see freedom in dressing with the new generation. You don't see it much with people who are already grown up. My generation is still always thinking, Is it feminine? Is it masculine? Men, especially, have been stuck for such a long time - now, they're changing a lot. The new generation of men and women doesn't think in those old ways so much. For example, a young man might see a woman's suit from the '60s, and if he likes it, he buys it and wears it. Our philosophy has always been that each person is made up of female and male hormones. What we're interested in is encouraging in people their freedom to express themselves the way they want.

SG: And it doesn't have to be one thing or the other. In the D&G show presenting next year's Spring/Summer Collection, which you saw earlier today, there were models who had on very feminine pieces of clothing, but they looked very masculine when they walked. There were people who had very masculine outfits on, and still they were feminine seeming. If you look at the young people on the street, you really see this evolution that is happening in terms of the kinds of freedom we are talking about.

INTERVIEW: TWO. Obviously you're talking about something that goes beyond androgyny. Is that what the see-through clothes are about in all the lines? Are you showing how transparent all the stereotypes of maleness and femaleness have become - that we can see right through them, see right through the rules of what's accepted and what's taboo, and move through and beyond all of that?

DD: What we're talking about is criss-cross-dressing. Things are melting more and more into one. In general, it's a time when different cultures are melting down. All sorts of boundaries are melting. Look at the speed of news traveling in the media and in all the other forms of technological communication.

INTERVIEW: There was the polyester revolution in fashion. Maybe what you're doing is reflecting the polymorphous rovolution. [laughter all around]

DD: Look at the natural way that young people are criss-cross-dressing without thinking about it.

SG: Whether it was meant for a woman or a man, I like this shin so -

DD and SG: - I wear it.

INTERVIEW: Three. You both obviously have a kind of Idealism about the world's capacity to become a place where men and woman can be more free to express themselves on the outside in a way that's closer to how they feel on the Inside. But why do you choose fashion as the medium for your messages?

DD: I grew up in fashion. My father was a tailor. Without thinking about it, fashion became my medium of communication. It was the way I was able to do the things I was dreaming about. I didn't plan on becoming a designer - it was more ingrained than that. My philosophy has always been that it's impossible to live without dreams. As a designer, I see dreams as my job. It's like being a psychologist. I have to capture what people are feeling and translate that into fashion and even provide what people want before they consciously know they want it.

SG: As for me, I had never thought of working in fashion. Yet when I was about fifteen I started to like some fashion - such as Fiorucci. At university I studied graphic design so I could go into advertising, and after I finished I worked in that field for about six months, but I didn't care for it because my heart wasn't in it. I started to work in fashion because by then I felt the need inside me to do it. I was lucky because a designer took me under his wing and helped me understand the world of fashion. But it was ultimately Domenico who taught me the most about fashion. As time went on while I was learning about it, I fell in love with it - with designing, with making clothes, with dressing people - but I don't like the fashion system. I close myself off from it.

INTERVIEW: Four. At this point you're designing two lines, Dolce & Gabbana and D&G, which means that during both the women's shows and the men's shows you guys present two collections each time, which must keep the adrenaline up between the presentations. But on the last day when you're done with the latest collection, and the latest show, how do you feel?

SG: Like it's the end of a big, big ball. Everybody has left and you are left alone.

INTERVIEW: Depressed?

SG: Si.

DD: It's the same for me. And it's worse after the women's shows. The feeling we get after the shows must be what a woman feels after she gives birth and is all drained. Except there's a difference. She's happy, and she has the baby. After our shows, our baby, our collection, is finished. Then six months later when I see people wearing the clothes, I have other emotions; it's like seeing my baby again. But in between we've been working on something else. Because after a show we immediately start to think about the next season, the next collection, and forget about what we have just done.

INTERVIEW: Five. In this respect, it seems even harder for designers than it Is for artists or writers. At least when artists do get shows or when writers get their things published, It's out there for longer than half an hour. Your shows last, what? Twenty minutes? Which leads to the question of how they are passed on to those who weren't there. Are you satisfied with the general level of fashion Journalism and fashion criticism?

SG: It is very superficial. Very few people study - the majority of the fashion press doesn't know what lies beneath or behind the work, and they don't know the history of the art form they are covering. But it's the public response that matters the most to us.

INTERVIEW: SIX. What about hew you feel when you begin to create a new collection. Do you get tired at the very thought of how much you have to do in such a short time?

DD: We are happy. We don't feel any sense of exhaustion because we've begun the new dream. It's a straggle to capture the dream, but the search is exciting and energizing.

INTERVIEW: Seven. The buyers are sometimes the bridge between the public and the designers, if one doesn't have one's own shops. You guys do, but your things are also in other stores. Now, you're known, but what about when you weren't?

DD: I remember our first collection ten years ago. Buyers would come and say, "I have a budget to buy your collection. I personally don't like it, but people are asking for it. Can you choose for me, because I don't understand it."

INTERVIEW: Eight. It would seem that the models who are the first ones to actually wear the clothes don't have any problem understanding them. They always seem to be so into them.

DD: After the shows, the models usually want everything. The clothes, the T-shirts, the sandals, the shoes - "Please, Domenico. I want. Please, Stefano. I want. Give me one. Give me one." We say, "Thank you, we're finished." They say. "No, no, no. We'll stay."

INTERVIEW: Nine. Because your presentations have paid enormous attention to the style that's going on around the fashion - such as the hair - as well as to the style in which the fashion is worn, it has been said in the past that you're stylists more than you are designers. Do you have a response?

DD: That was a few years ago, and probably comes because we presented the clothes in a way that was integrated with the designs. For instance, we'd tuck the knitwear into the pants in a messy, informal way. But that's the way people might have worn the sweaters, in a natural way. The press wasn't used to that. Now, many designers are hiring stylists to get just those kinds of effects. The biggest problem for a designer, in fact, is to create a style.

INTERVIEW: Ten. Yours is a collaboration made up of two people. Why are you interested in working this way?

SG: When two people collaborate the right way, there is a third person that is born. A third head. Dolce & Gabbana is this.

DD: We have different tastes, which means that together we tap a combination of desires. Sometimes we might create something that is more Gabbana; sometimes it might be more Dolce. But what we create always has to arrive at some kind of agreement. I like fish. Octopus is the only food that, when I see it, I go crazy for it. . . .

SG: I like cakes.

INTERVIEW: And yet Domenico's last name, Dolce, means cake. See how connected you are! And where you're different, between the two of you, and between the chemistry that results, you've got a lot of different kinds of hunger covered. That's what fashion Is, Isn't It? Dreams and hungers for things?

COPYRIGHT 1995 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group