MARK SIMPSON.com

Dolce & Gabbana and the New World Order

by Mark Simpson (Arena Homme Plus, Winter 2006)
If you think that Italy won this year’s Football World Cup, think again. In actual, historical fact, this year’s World Cup was won by Dolce & Gabbana, the Milan-based, city-state fashion brand run by two rags-to-rag-rich prince(sse)s, that seems increasingly unassailable, particularly in the world of men’s style. Which increasingly means in the world of men.

In a post-metrosexual era in which masculinity has been well-and-truly aestheticized, and men all over the world have become more Italian, it’s entirely right and proper that Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana should be, in effect, designing masculinity by decree for the 21st Century. The Italian team’s sensually shiny yet coolly elegant blue suits and shirts – and the spornographic ad campaign for D&G underwear, featuring team-members hanging around the showers in spectacular briefs, oiled up and waiting for our attention – shows D&G’s total mastery of the new masculine universe.

To spell it out: the Italian team won the World Cup because, thanks to D&G, the world, male and female, would much rather celebrate in their changing rooms than with those of the rather dowdy, rather plain French team. D&G understand better than anyone the modern male desire to be desired in a world where desirability increasingly means victory – and rather liking what you see in the mirror.

This is, after all, why the city state of fashion D&G has become a World Power (they even have their own Navy – at least in their recent advertising campaign.) As Domenico and Stefano gushed in their forward to a delicious photo book of the Italian stallions published before the World Cup: ‘Really good and all handsome. Handsome, really handsome… We love Italy… long and narrow, warm and sensual come rain or shine, the Italy that has faith it itself and never gives up. Quite rightly envied and rich in art, because taught to appreciate beauty,, having grown up surrounded by beauty.’ Replace ‘Italy’ with ‘Dolce & Gabbana’ and you have the truth. The seamster boys have staged an aesthetic coup d’etat, effectively absorbing ‘Italy’ herself into their own brand; their March on Rome more of a sashay than an assault, but no less effective for that. [Arguably, given that Dolce is from Sicily and the romantic styles of that island carried through to the brand, they also represent the first serious union of North and South since the time of Il Duce.

And of course they know it. It’s not just a vain fashion boast that their Men’s Autumn Collection is called The New Power and, with it’s almost Austro Hungarian (i.e. Milanese) motifs, appears to announce the foundation of an empire. Or perhaps merely the acknowledgement of it. After 20 years in business, they have more than 100 boutiques worldwide and over 2000 employees, wholesale revenues of over $1B (the company is soley owned by the two designer princelings), and have just bought a large cinema in Milan to showcase their collections; a D&G Colliseum (Milan was also once the capital of the Western Roman Empire). Little wonder that Hollywood can’t get enough of D&G (who are in many ways the new Hollywood). Hip Hop and RnB keep name-checking them (e.g. Black Eyed Peas and 50 Cent), and David Beckham imitates them (see his new ‘Intimate’ fragrance ). Meanwhile the casual-yet-noble, slutty-yet-stylish, approachable-yet-mythical, naked-yet-dressed (those astonishing shiny suits are fully-dressed nudity) approach of D&G looks more and more like the ideology of a mediated, pornolized age.

But then, D&G began their fiendish work back in the 1980s, the decade which laid the foundations of metrosexuality, beginning the transformation of masculinity into an appetising commodity. Perhaps this is why their Men’s Summer 2007 Collection is replete with Chariots of Fire, Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber references – as well as more oiled athletic limbs and lip-glossed suits.

The future foretold has finally arrived, guys. And it’s D&G.
© Mark Simpson 2006