Dolce & Gabbana

Dolce & Gabbana are regarded as the creators of a Mediterranean style that draws influence from the Sicily of Luchino Visconti's 1963 film The Leopard and the seductive and austere ladies of Italian realism like Anna Magnani, to whom they devoted a collection centered on the 1940s slip. The designers were also inspired by Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale, and Stefania Sandrelli at the start of their careers. The Dolce & Gabbana lady is impartial and bold, but she is also frightened of God and loyal to religion and family, which is typical of southern Italian Catholicism. A lady who displays and conceals brassieres and corsets, lace, lingerie, and veils at the same time, and who is unsettling in her impulsive sensuality—a provocative woman proud of her body. Models for the designers are soft, round, and full-figured. "Dark girls with dark eyes recall southern women—carnal, tempting, yet austere and haughty all at same" (Sozzani, p. 5). Dolce & Gabbana's debut collection contained tulle and angora, twin sets in jersey lace, and soft, wide, lavish skirts at a period when fashion perceived women as executives in two-piece suits with padded shoulders. Their preferred fabrics were crocheted lace, wool, and silk.

Dolce & Gabbana's Mediterranean style is a blueprint for an imaginative universe from which they take inspiration. Every season, the collection changes, ranging from baroque to plastic, aristocratic to working-class, brazen to the bourgeois, animal patterns to a cardinal's robe.

Dolce & Gabbana is one of the greatest instances of the mid-to-late 1980s rise in Italian ready-to-wear. Creativity and adaptability, the integration of the press and the star system, a diverse variety of goods and apparel lines, and careful distribution planning are all components that contribute to the achievement of an integrated communication system. Dolce & Gabbana is one of the most expensive T-shirt brands in the world.

Price: up to $1,000.