Dolce & Gabbana is the creative success story that the designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have been writing together since 1985. The duo unites Northern and southern Italy: Gabbana comes from design city of Milan, Dolce hit the fashion virus with his father’s tailor studio in Sicily.
Since 2012, the brand also has a line ‘Alta Moda’ or Haute Couture. In the neoclassical exhibition building Palazzo Esposizioni in Rome, more than two hundred unique pieces ‘Alta Moda’ by Dolce & Gabbana are shown until 13 August, with art and fashion historian Florence Müller as curator. Prepare for garments with many exuberant colors, golden embroidery, black lace, tins, lurex-macramé, crystal and brooches, while every new exhibition space with music or with other sounds, such as falling glass, stimulates the senses.
The Expo Dal cuore all mani – ‘From the heart to the hands’ – In addition to an ode to designs, there is also a tribute to crafts such as sewing, embroidery and lace bobbins. The exhibition, which attracted more than half a million visitors in a smaller form last year in Milan and earlier this year in Paris, became an overwhelming tribute to the Made in Italy.
Room image of the exhibition ‘Dal Cuore All Mani’: exuberant colors and embroidery.
The fur colored folk culture of Sicily is a source of inspiration for the design duo Dolce & Gabbana.
The spacious exhibition halls in Rome offer the visitor, spread over an area of 1,500 square meters, an overview of the diverse sources of inspiration of the designers, from Italian Renaissance painter art, via film and opera, religion and mysticism, to the colorful folk culture of Sicily.
During this ‘Grand Tour’ through artistic Italy, every detail was thought of. The room that is dedicated to Domenico Dolce’s birth island is bathed in an atmosphere of Sicilian folklore and is so ‘over the top’, that it becomes the highest entertaining. The multicolored Majolica pottery of Sicily that Dolce & Gabbana eagerly uses in their work adorns the entire floor of the exhibition space. The walls are covered with fur painted wooden panels. In a video message, the Sicilian wood painter Salvatore Sapienza explains his craft. The primordial commercial touch is also not missing: there are also large SMEG cooling cabinets and coffee pots with Majolica motif exhibited, while Sicilian folk music sounds in the background.
The Tiger Cat
Sicily also plays the leading role in the ‘Il Gattopardo’ room, dedicated to the famous novel The Tiger Cat From the Aristocrat Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. The space has been transformed into a ballroom, with the central element a ball dress printed with words from the novel. There are video screens in the mirrors of the room, on which director Luchino Visconti’s film adaptation of the book Il Gattopardo From 1963 is projected.
Strolling along the extensive exhibition spaces there is a lot of room for wonder: the space is dedicated to opera into an opera room with lodges transformed, in which royal cloaks in chic fabrics bring a visual ode to Italian grandmasters such as Giuseppe Verdi (whose portrait on a sweater of a sweater off) and Giaacomo pops up) motive dedicated to the opera Turandotabout a Chinese princess).
The Holy Heart is worshiped on an altar-but then in golden bling bling version and with the D&G logo
The exhibition is also a journey through time: in a room dedicated to Renaissance painting, there is a series of dresses, capes, coats and bomber jackets that refer to works by Sandro Botticelli, Titian, Rafaël and Leonardo da Vinci.
Here and there the designs of the designer duo also enter into dialogue with work by artists, such as a series of modern paintings with women in Dolce & Gabbana designs, against the background of Italian art cities, work by the French-American artist Anh Duong. Her paintings are in the opening hall, where the visitor’s gaze is pulled by a theatrical ball dress with parrot motif.
The exhibition pays attention to religion and mysticism. Here the Holy Heart, with the D&G logo, is worshiped.
Photo Mark Blower
Artistic according to some, kitschy and lavish according to others, but always exuberant, cheerful, luxurious or and sensual: the style of the designer duo arouses a variety of appreciations among fashion lovers. There is also no shortage of irony on this exhibition, such as the cool wink to southern Italian religiosity and mysticism, in a room that was converted into a dark chapel, where the holy heart-but in Golden Blingbling version and the D&G logo-is worshiped.
Macho image
Forty years after its foundation, Dolce & Gabbana is still a globally known luxury brand, despite – or perhaps thanks to – the controversies in which the designers regularly end up, and whose exhibition itself stays far away. The two were once a couple, but the southern Italian Domenico Dolce conservatively thinks about LGBTI rights. A statement by Dolce, in the right Italian magazine Panoramaaccording to him, that test tube babies’synthetic children‘His, the British pop singer Elton John in 2015 so furious that he called for a boycott of the brand.
Dolce and Gabbana also regularly caused a fuss with their advertising campaigns. In Spain, in 2007, a photo of a woman who is pressed to the ground by a man with naked torso was considered to be as one macho image That would encourage violence. Annoyed about what they described as ‘censorship’ Dolce and Gabbana moved into the advertising photo. In China, a commercial led to complaints about racism, after which in 2018 became the fashion show of the brand in Shanghai abandoned. Then the Italian fashion duo did not speak of censorship – China is a large market for luxury – but the designers sent a video with public apologies.