La Dolce Vita

DOMENICO DOLCE andSTEFANO GABBANA continue to spread their laced wings and spice up the Italian way of life. vivienne tang sits down with the design duo in Beijing to discuss their beginnings, their differences and their plans for Dolce & Gabbana in China

ONE MIGHT THINK that the Dolce & Gabbana boys are two minds that think as one, but that simply couldn’t be further from the truth.

Even though Domenico Dolce, 53, and Stefano Gabbana, 49 this month, have worked alongside each other for almost 30 years, weathered a fiery love affair and still live together in the same building (despite no longer being romantically involved), the two are nothing like peas in a pod. Short, bald and muscular, Sicilian-born Dolce inherited his fashion sense from his tailor father, and hates the gym but adores Italian football; Gabbana is Milanese, tall, lean, fascinated by patterns and loves to work out, but only tolerates the national sport when he can dress its hunky gladiators.

Mix the two together, however, and you get a sensual and sexy concoction of la dolce vita. Women feel seductive yet classy in their iconic lace numbers, while men feel masculine and channel their inner Latin lover when slipping into a Dolce & Gabbana suit. It’s no surprise that the duo has attracted a slew of celebrities over the years: Italian beauty Monica Bellucci, and style icons Madonna – who has toured in Dolce & Gabbana – and Kylie Minogue have all been associated with the brand. Screen siren Scarlett Johansson is its new fragrance and beauty face, creating a frenzy when she recently graced the star-studded front row at the brand’s spring/summer 2012 show.

They may not have always seen eye to eye, but the two friends have stuck together through thick and thin, from their humble beginnings in the 1980s, when they survived on pasta and milk, to their glory days of the ’90s, when supermodels such as Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista helped the brand morph into an empire with the introduction of menswear, accessories and a younger line, D&G. There followed a range of perfumes, more collaborations with stars, lingerie, sports sponsorships, a restaurant and finally a whole range of digital platforms (Gabbana has become an avid tweeter), including an online magazine. A jewellery collection with horn-shaped amulets and reproductions of the Virgin Mary is slated for launch this month.

One chapter of their work has recently been reined in with the closure of the D&G line. The pair will be folding the second line into the main collection from autumn/winter 2012, freeing them up to focus on other projects, including expansion in China.

In 2005 Dolce & Gabbana opened a store in Hangzhou, becoming the first Italian fashion company to solely own a store in mainland China. But despite a large Chinese following, the pair didn’t visit Hong Kong and the mainland until last year. Now they’re back for more, as I find out when I meet them for Prestige Hong Kong’s exclusive interview and photo shoot at the China Club in Beijing. Gabbana has brought a cold with him from Russia, but the “boys” are in good spirits, bantering and finishing off each other’s sentences.

This isn’t your first time in China.
Domenico Dolce: We came last November. We’d planned the trip for a long time, but for many reasons we’d always cancelled it. Finally, in November we arrived, and we’ve been very enthusiastic ever since. We stayed in Beijing for four days, and after that we went to Hong Kong.
Stefano Gabbana: No, Shanghai, then Hong Kong.
Dolce: So first Shanghai, and then after that we went to Hong Kong. Yes, that’s completely different [smiles], but we’re in love with China. We love the culture, the energy, the colours and the symbols such as the dragon.
Gabbana: We have a fascination with the image of China. We like to buy photo books.
Dolce: And the food. Unfortunately, in Milano we don’t have a nice [Chinese] restaurant, but when we go to London or New York, we go to Mr Chow. We really love the culture because it’s fast. People are so fast, so clever; similar to Italians.
Gabbana: You know I have a room in my house in Portofino that’s dedicated to Chinese culture. It’s done up with red tapestry. The brocade and silk they made in Venice for me. Venice was the first step from China. When they came from China to Italy, they brought silk.
Dolce: Marco Polo.

So you plan to open several new stores in China over the next few years?
Dolce: Maybe 30 in two to three years. We love this place. We got here in the afternoon and we did a bit of sightseeing. We went to the Great Wall yesterday. It’s amazing. It’s too big. It’s too much.

I’ve actually never been to the Great Wall.
Dolce: That’s like with some places in Milano for us. I think it’s normal for the people who actually live there.
Gabbana: It’s like me in Rome. I’ve never been to St Peter’s.
Dolce: I’ve seen it once [laughs]. And my boyfriend, who lived in Rome for a long time, he’s never been inside the Colosseum. If you live in the city you don’t do all these touristy things.

Dolce & Gabbana has a few style staples that are emblematic of the brand, such as brocade, animal prints and lace. How do you reinvent them in every collection and make them look new each time?
Gabbana: We don’t know [laughs]. We just make it because we love these fabrics – crochet, brocade.
Dolce: After 25 years we created a book for the company with our iconic ideas for Dolce & Gabbana. This isn’t public. It’s very private. We featured all the special outfits from the last 25 years, because sometimes we lose the idea of what Dolce & Gabbana is about, because we want everything to be new. Many customers asked us to return to the true Dolce & Gabbana style. Maybe it’s old, but for the new generation it’s new. They’ve never seen it before and never dressed in it. So now we do a mix. We take this idea of sexiness, but the cut, the colour, the proportion and the fabric are completely new.

Your menswear is really strong. You’ve shaped how a whole nation dresses.
Dolce: We created a lot of buzz with the new men’s generation. Ten years ago we started with David Beckham and he paved the way for men’s fashion, especially for sporty people. It’s fashionable without being too clownish. Afterwards, we worked with many football teams. Working with sports people really opened the brand and exposed it to a new industry.
Gabbana: We had the chance to cater to a lot of different types of men. It became part of their lifestyle.
Dolce: If women’s fashion is a bit over the top, it’s beautiful, but if you do the same for men it’s too feminine. We prefer women’s to be more fashion and men’s to be more style.
Gabbana: We love the opposites – masculine and feminine. We don’t want them to be too androgynous.

Your clothes are known for sensuality and sexiness. The seducer and the Latin lover are very much to the fore in your collections. How much of that is taken from your personal lives and experiences?
Gabbana: I think it’s in our blood. It comes from the soul. That’s the Italian mood. We don’t think about it consciously.
Dolce: We love to make people happy and more confident when they dress themselves in our clothes. Maybe you’ll wear our shirt or jacket, and you look into the mirror and think, “Wow, today I’m so beautiful.” We love to hear that. We put much effort into the cut and the proportion. It’s not just for models and skinny people.

What was the inspiration for your first collection?
Dolce: When we sketched the first collection, the inspiration was Anna Magnani and Sophia Loren. For the men’s suits we took inspiration from Marcello Mastroianni. We never used to talk about American movies or people like Ingrid Bergman and Marilyn Monroe. The American influence came to us when we found Madonna.
Gabbana: But Madonna is an Italian blonde.

Is she one of your favourite muses?
Gabbana: Yes, she’s one of the muses. We just arrived from Moscow. We organised a party there at the Italian embassy with Monica Bellucci – she’s also one of the muses.
Dolce: We haven’t mentioned Scarlett [Johansson] yet. She’s American, but she veramente represents the Italian style of life. I think the Italian essence doesn’t just come from being Italian. It’s a style of life. Maybe you find it in another place, in China or Russia. Maybe you don’t even find it in Italy.
Gabbana: It’s like an Italian dream, something that people around the world dream of when they think about Italy.

How did you meet Madonna and what is she like to work with?
Gabbana: She sings a lot [laughs].
Dolce: We’ve known her for 22 years.
Gabbana: I think it’s 20 years. We were fans at the time. We loved Madonna. We had all the CDs, the vinyls. She did a concert in Italy, in Torino, and we went there, and during the concert we said to each other, “Oh, we would love to dress her one day. Can you imagine?” And four months after that she went to a party in Paris in a Dolce & Gabbana dress. It was a crochet dress. She bought it. We didn’t know about it. We just found the picture in the Herald Tribune. After that, she wore more Dolce & Gabbana at different parties, and Dolce & Gabbana became so popular when she presented our clothes. To the premiere of In Bed With Madonna she wore a black corset, black stockings and a black jacket. So immediately the English newspapers started [printing] the photo from the fashion show. The corset was on Yasmin Le Bon in the fashion show. Like this it became popular.
Dolce: And in the movie she talks to her friend and says, “Look, I want to buy a Dolce & Gabbana shirt.” And then she opens the box…
Gabbana: We called her agent and asked to meet her, and she gave a location in an Italian restaurant in New York.
Dolce: When we saw her for the first time we were sweating like crazy. There was water on the floor [laughs]. She was an icon for us. It was at the time of the song “Vogue,” and after the dinner she invited us to a club. And she then came to Milano too. But first of all she tested us, and asked a lot of questions as if she didn’t understand, like a big interview. “You love this. You love that. Why don’t you do this?” The final conclusion? “OK, let’s go dancing.” [Laughs].

The day after, she invited us to brunch, and we stayed there for three or four days. When we went back to Milano, she invited us again. And for a long time for about five years…this is a very funny story. Every time we would go to Miami for work, we would find her in Miami. We would go to New York and find her in New York. It was very strange.
Gabbana: We had many collaborations: video clips, two press tours and one tour.
Dolce: Working with her is very difficult but very rewarding. She wants to understand everything when we sketch the clothes for her video and her tours. The clothes are special clothes, they’re very theatrical.

Stefano, you’ll wear other brands, whereas Domenico, you stick with your own brand? Is that true?
Gabbana: Sometimes, yes.
Dolce: I love to wear my own clothes, and I love to sketch what I’ll be wearing.

Which designers do you like?
Dolce: There are a lot of cool designers. We love all the designers with a strong style. We love [Alber] Elbaz, [Nicolas] Ghesquière. We love the new guy, Erdem, and Christopher Kane. Whether or not it’s your personal taste, it’s very interesting to see these designers who have a strong point of view, because it’s not easy.

Let’s talk a bit about you two, as I believe you’re very different from each other, despite the brand you’ve built together.
Dolce: Yeah, I’m short and he’s tall [laughs]. Well, at first sight we’re completely different, because our cultures are completely different. I grew up in Sicily and my family worked in fashion. My father had a company and my mother had a big shop. I would read lots of magazines, and I was familiar with designers such as Versace, Armani. I liked that idea [of designing], and I asked my family about it. Then after one year I found this school and I went to Milano to study. This story is too long [laughs].

Stefano, I take it you’re more the adventurous one and Domenico is the conservative one?
Gabbana: Si. You understand it correctly [laughs]. It’s true, and it’s strange, because we’re very similar. We come from two different parts of Italy, but we have the same sense of beauty. I come from the north. I grew up in the middle of modernity. Milano is a unique town in Italy that is very forward thinking. The rest of Italy is very classical, and I missed this. When I went to Sicily for the first time, I had this fascination, because I think it’s one of the strongest parts of Italy, very Italian with strong roots. I had this affection, and he had the opposite, but at the end of the day, we have the same goal. It’s something in the middle. Maybe we meet in Rome [laughs].
Dolce: It’s a bit of a strange characteristic. I’m Sicilian and I love Milano, because I love all the new and the minimalist aspects. He’s from Milano and he loves the opposite. We talk about this all the time.
Gabbana: This crochet here [he points at the sofa cover] is very typical for Sicily.
Dolce: In the north it doesn’t exist. When I was living in Sicily I hated it, because for me it represented my childhood, but now that I live in a different place, I like it. And like this, with this fusion, we created Dolce & Gabbana. So the brand is absolutely Italian. But yeah, I love all the modern art. I think I’m very square. Sometimes I don’t understand myself, and I ask myself, “Why is it that you like this?”
Gabbana: Because sometimes he loves something, and I love the opposite, and in the middle of it, we change. I would love what he loved before, and he would love what I loved before. È strano.
Dolce: I’m organising all the groups for the collection, because we create four different divisions each time. So when we sketch the Sicilian group, which includes black lace, every time I would say, “Oh no, I hate it.”
Gabbana: But then when I don’t prepare the Sicilian group, he’ll say, “Where is the Sicilian group!” You don’t want it, and I don’t make it and then you turn around and you want it! [Laughs].
Dolce: It’s very important, because all the new countries, such as China and Russia, love Sicilian clothes, because it’s new to them. All the new generations love it. You know Magdalena [Frackowiak], the model? Last time she wore the corset in the show, and we had a fitting and we ended up giving it to her. Every season I have five people who want a corset piece from the show. So every season we create the corset dress in a new way. When Magdalena came for the fitting she went crazy and said to Ginta [Lapina], “I’m so lucky. I love my corset. This is my dream!” For all the young people this is completely new.

You two were in a relationship in the past, and you’re still designing together. Do problems arise sometimes because of that? Do you ever fight?
Gabbana: No, not really. We used to fight in the past, about colours, skirts…but nothing serious.

…and you also live together in the same building.
Dolce: We live on two different floors, but we have stairs inside, just in case we have to go up and down [laughs].

Do you also live with your partners?
Gabbana: I don’t [laughs].
Dolce: I have a partner, but we don’t live together.

Do your partners ever get jealous because of your tight work relationship?
Gabbana: No, no, no.
Dolce: Never, but think about it. If you explain it well, and if the person is intelligent, they will understand that this friendship is also part of my job. To me, Stefano is like family.

Where do you see yourselves and the brand in the future? Would you ever retire?
Gabbana: No, no, no. I’m the one who wants to work. I want to continue. It’s part of my life. I love my job, and I think it’s not possible to live in this world without a job. I hope my mind will continue to support me, but I don’t know.
Dolce: I don’t know. I love the idea of stopping some day soon. I think every person in this world has a time of creativity, not just in fashion. And over the history of time you can see that sometimes people who stay on for too long inflict damage to the company, because they continue to work. I hope I understand and see that moment. And when that time comes you should push the next generation.

So you would hire a designer to design for Dolce & Gabbana?

Dolce: Yeah, why not? But that’s my point of view.