Interview

SG: We are so different. Eighty percent of Domenico loves to go somewhere new, to develop an idea, and the other 20 percent goes back to the roots. I’m the opposite: 80 percent from the roots, 20 percent from the future. So it’s a fight all the time. But I say, “Okay, I love your trip. I agree with you, it’s very new for Dolce & Gabbana.” But I need to do it so it’s recognizable.

TB: So he’s the dreamer, and you’re the realist?

SG: No, no, it’s not like that. He is more projected into the future, and I am more attached to my roots, and the balance is Dolce & Gabbana.

DD: I want to dance. I want to live.

SG: And I say to him, “No. You come here.” And he says to me, “No. You come with me.”

TB: So you’re the man, and he’s the little boy. Is that the way you were in your relationship as well?

SG: Yes.

TB: [to Dolce] You reinvented yourself when you came to Milan from Sicily when you were only 18.

DD: Yes, I started my second life. I love the new. I’m a very curious person.

TB: [to Gabbana] Did you reinvent yourself?

SG: No. I was born here. I grew up here. I don’t change. I think he discovered himself as a different person. Maybe I’m more Italian than him, because I love to stay.

DD: I like time. Now is not like two minutes later. And it’s never like before. Repetition doesn’t exist.

TB: Well, that’s a big fat existential moment.

DD: This is the problem sometimes, because he doesn’t want to change anything. But maybe what you discover next is much better.

SG: But not all people are ready to understand the new. You think it’s easy, but it’s not. People love to recognize, to feel comfortable in something. Ninety-five percent of humanity is like me. Maybe I’m stupid, but I’m like this.

TB: That said, your Spring collection for women was a startling mix of the familiar and the strange, and as brocade-heavy as an empress’s closet.

SG: We start every season with a piece of paper, two lists—“Yes” and “No.” And always it’s “No brocade, no animal prints . . .” It’s too easy to do the brocade. We do the list because we are not young. We are old chickens in the system. We’ve done this job for 24 years, you know.

DD: And we design too much animal print. So, “No animal print,” and “Yes a white shirt with lace,” “Yes a new shoulder,” “No brocade . . .” But finally, maybe I need some brocade.

SG: Or then maybe I need to do it in a corset, and in the end . . . 

TB: The whole collection is brocade!

DD: Yes, it’s very funny.

SG: When we came back from the holiday, we thought a jacket would be really nice in duchesse satin, or in silk Mikado, but because the shape was really new for us, we felt we needed something to make people more comfortable. He said, “Brocade.” I said, “No. Fuck brocade.” But he was right.

TB: But if you say you’re not going to do the corset and you’re not going to do brocade, and you keep coming back to them, aren’t these things a prison for you? 

SG: Yes, okay, but if we start from that point, we don’t do anything new. We need to start from an opposite point. The jacket with the strange shoulder in black Mikado was beautiful, like a sketch, but I felt we needed something more romantic. And it was shocking in the brocade, a geometric shape with a touch of romance. And with a bow and a necklace, you could imagine Claudia Cardinale in a remake of The Leopard.