If anyone still harbored doubts about the breadth of Dolce & Gabbana’s sartorial punch, the fall collection wasted no time knocking them out. Framed as a celebration of individuality, the show delivered a confident parade of singularly styled looks: tailored, manly separates mixed with knowing flair and meant to be shuffled, layered, and reassembled according to even the most idiosyncratic personal codes. The word that lingered throughout was presence, that slightly cocky Italianate swagger Stefano and Domenico have been mastering since the ’80s and that still functions as their North Star—charting their long-standing manifesto of masculinity.
The show, titled The Portrait of Man, might make literary purists do a double take: Henry James’s heroine in The Portrait of a Lady wrestled with society and selfhood; Dolce & Gabbana’s men wrestle with society’s stubborn insistence on a boxed idea of male identity. “There’s such conformity in today’s society,” they said before the show. “We wanted to celebrate individuality, the stories and singularities behind every man, the complexities of his inner world, his memories, his humanity.” They envisioned the catwalk as a stage for a tableau of contemporary archetypes: the introspective intellectual, the Mediterranean heartthrob, the visionary entrepreneur, the Italian flaneur. “There’s no single way to be a man,” they remarked. “There are as many possibilities as there are men, and each one deserves its own portrait.”
Of course, Stefano and Domenico ensured every portrait was nothing short of picture-perfect, styled to the nines with a soigné bravado only they could pull off. Elegance, in their hands, is potent and impactful. “There are no trends in today’s fashion,” they remarked. “Everything is so fragmented.” Sharp observers of society’s rhythms, they noted that what people wear mirrors the zigzagging waves of the spirit of the times. “We remember when we launched D&G, our younger line in the ’90s,” they recalled. “We would spend hours on the streets of New York, studying how people dressed, absorbing every little detail.” Today, they believe, fashion isn’t fashionable anymore. It’s more about charting your own course, dictating your own rules, envisioning your one-of-a-kind uniform. Yet the idea of Italian ben vestire remains the anchor of their enduring style, grounded in the art of old-school tailoring, and today’s show offered no shortage of convincing specimens.
Riffing on their greatest hits, the show served up faux-fur trench coats that looked more about making an entrance than keeping warm; soft-tailored salt-and-pepper wool suits with shoulders assertive enough to catch the eye yet fluid enough to move with ease; sharp double-breasted coats draped over slouchy, high-waist trousers with a retro nod, finished with plush, round-shaped knit jumpers. A black velvet robe de chambre was seemingly designed for a fastidious dandy with a taste for indulgence; biker jackets and bombers were layered over sexy denims shredded just so; and for the finale came a line of dark tuxedos, cinched at the waist by cummerbunds that might have doubled as gentlemen’s corsets.
The show moved at a brisk, energetic pace, the vast range of looks held in focus by the designers’ sure-footed command of their métier. They seem only to improve with time, a view that the front row—including Lucien Laviscount, Benson Boone, Kerem Bürsin, and brand ambassador Jung Haein—appeared to endorse.
