2024-04-21 14:44:20
The exhibition “From the heart to the hands: Dolce & Gabbana”, presented from April 7 to July 31 on several floors of the Royal Palace in Milan, Italy, is dedicated to the collaboration between Italian craftsmanship and the Italian brand, one of most successful in the history of fashion.
Designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana met in Milan in the early 1980s, before launching a design consultancy studio and then their own label in 1985.
However, the brand’s identity does not come from the elegant fashion capital, Gabbana’s hometown, but from Dolce’s Sicilian heritage, which distinguishes it from its rivals in the luxury sector.
In a room of the “Palazzo Reale”, a multicolored dress – adorned with pompoms – is displayed alongside objects from the Sicilian artisanal tradition that inspired it, such as majolica ceramics and carefully painted tiles.
Other rooms pay homage to Italian traditions, from church mosaics to the opera.
The art of Venetian glassmaking is present with dresses and headdresses covered in crystals or silver sparkles, in a room lined with finely crafted mirrors and magnificent chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.
The exhibition “is an open love letter to Italian culture”, a source of inspiration for the brand, the organizers emphasize in a statement.
“It traces the extraordinary creative process of its founders: from the heart, where ideas are born, to the hands, which give them shape,” they detail.
The artisanal know-how is exhibited in real time in a temporary workshop, where tailors, dressmakers and artisans will work every day in a space that recreates the true laboratories of the fashion house.
After Milan, the exhibition will go on an international tour.
© Agence France-Presse