The Dolce & Gabbana curve reached its apex in autumn/winter 2007, where the designers sent out model after model in crystal-embellished evening gowns cinched in with a provocative metal ‘chastity’ belt, complete with padlock. This became the most wanted accessory of the awards season, and showed their nous in acknowledging that the red carpet was now a fully fledged extension of the catwalk. A somewhat less-expected piece of publicity, however, was the appearance of Naomi Campbell on her last day of a week-long community service stint in New York, clocking off for the last time in the full catwalk look with the little padlock swinging all the way to a waiting limousine.
Resplendent in Dolce & Gabbana, Naomi Campbell leaves the last of five days’ community service at a Manhattan sanitation garage in March 2007. Heading from her final shift straight to Elton John’s 60th birthday party, Campbell topped a week of commuting-cum-catwalking with this full-length Swarovski-encrusted gown, to the delight of the waiting paparazzi.
A very different sensibility, both cerebral and celebratory, lay behind Dolce & Gabbana’s designs for spring 2008, which Vogue’s Sarah Mower said had ‘ticked all the boxes of trend without wavering from their own heartland for a second’. In a collection Mower deemed ‘a virtuoso performance that showed them at their very best’, the designers invited ten young graduate artists from the Accademia di Brera in Milan to take bolts of silk tulle and organza and paint them like canvas, with the resulting, completely unique fabrics whipped into raw-edged dresses in loosely 1950s silhouettes. The results were sensational, adding both artistic gravitas and exuberant whimsicality to the perfected craft of the Dolce & Gabbana metier. It was haute couture in all but name, being the finest expression yet of Dolce & Gabbana’s unique, handcrafted beauty and, like haute couture, available only to order.
‘Everything is possible because, in one second, everything can change.’
DOMENICO DOLCE
