Designers Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce of Dolce & Gabbana have won over millennials with several seasons of streetwear offerings. However, this season the duo went back to what they do best “Sexy Italian Style” in hopes of introducing a new generation to a more refined way of dressing. Titled Eleganza, the collection makes you forget all about the world of social media and influencers. Nowhere to be found were the insta-famous models and celebrity offspring. Instead, the designers return to their “basics” – or rather their ultra-formal roots.
The designers say they were influenced by Bernini, Michelangelo, and Sicily for their collection full of glamorous elegant menswear looks that are sharply tailored, and appear to be almost from another era. This season served as a time machine, bringing 20th century gentleman dressing to 2019. Their updated archetypal tropes of masculine dressing from the inter and post-war years somehow didn’t feel dated, but timeless and classic.
At the back of the catwalk was an atelier working away and an announcer describing every look that was coming down the red-carpeted runway. Models were decked out in tailcoats and top hats, fur coats, metallic brocade and jacquard suiting, gentleman’s lounge robes and sequined smoking robes. A new Art Deco D&G logo was featured on country-club knits worn with tweed pants. Almost every single model wore a bowtie, which perfectly matched the one on their heavily embroidered and bedazzled dress shoes.
The designers stated they “love today because of the freedom: Everybody feels free to dress in whatever and however they want. But we wanted to explore this style of elegance now, because it gives young men of today the opportunity to enjoy fashion in a way that is new for them. We have lost this sense of elegance recently—fashion is the mirror of the time—and of course we do sportswear and mix and match too. But we’ve found that a lot of the guys we have worked recently with get very excited at the prospect of wearing an amazing suit or a tuxedo—a really strong suit or a tuxedo, not something boring—because that is not something that is so available to them. And this kind of elegance is timeless.”
See All the Looks from the Collection
