Dolce & Gabbana deliver a lesson in opulence - even as the former prime minister of Italy gets Covid-19
Dolce & Gabbana staged its Alta Sartoria show last night at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. This was not simply a catwalk show. It was CPR for the fashion industry and for Florence itself. For a town that relies on tourism, Covid-19 has been a catastrophe. It has been equally damaging for other Italian designers who are uncertain about showing their forthcoming collections in Milan later this month.
Dolce & Gabbana has been a front runner in demonstrating that a fashion show with an invited audience - all in matching branded masks and all seated at a metre’s distance from each other - won’t cause a mini cluster. As news broke that the billionaire former prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, has coronavirus, everyone was understandably jittery.
Dario Nardella, mayor of Florence, said, "in the 14th century, a plague came from the East and swept through Italy and then the rest of Europe, killing millions. In response to the Black Death, Florence became the cradle of the Renaissance."
He, and many others are hoping that this menswear show is a first sign of rebirth for the region and all the artisans and small businesses that rely on the Italian house and its clients’ apparently insatiable appetite for glitz, glamour, gold lamé and velvet.
As well as bringing Italian siren Monica Bellucci, 150 top clients and 40 international press to the area for three days of shows, dinners, cocktails and much trying on of diamond tiaras, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana invited a collection of local craftspeople to display their wares in a special exhibition at the Medici ducal palace before the show began.
This gave Florentine basket-weavers, mosaic makers, stationers, embroiderers and cobblers a chance to show their wares to a group of affluent and avid consumers. The duo are proud champions of ‘Made in Italy’ but this was even more local and even more necessary.
The menswear show itself was held in the huge Sala dei Cinquecenti in the Palazzo Vecchio beneath frescoes of battle scenes by Giorgio Vasari and it too drew heavy inspiration from the 15th century. There were brocades, mink collars, pearl-encrusted slippers and tasseled robes printed with scenes from Old Master paintings: Lorenzo the Magnificent might have felt at home in these.
There were medieval-style feathered tabards in canary yellow with a crimson lily motif - the symbol of the city. The designers also showed deceptively understated loose-fitting shirts and black trousers that a Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci might have painted in. Though whether either of those artists would have worn knee-high alligator boots to work is a moot point.
Berlusconi apparently caught his dose of the virus from former F1 boss Flavio Briatore’s Sardinian nightclub, Billionaire. The least either of these moguls can do is invest heavily in some Alta Sartoria when they recover - if only to put Italy’s new Renaissance on track.
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