Interview

TB: For the Spring collection, you made your women very fierce, in this strong, flat silhouette, and you made your men soft in pajamas.

DD: Women are more even on fashion and style, 50-50. For men, it’s 80-20 style and fashion. 

[There is some city talk . . . Dolce’s New York apartment, his love of the city’s openness, in comparison to London, which they are equally fond of, even though they find it quite closed.]

TB: Do you ever get bored in Milan?

SG: I don’t have the time to be bored. We do 14 collections, including D&G children. Plus all the accessories, sunglasses, D&G jewels, perfume, and now makeup. And Domenico took care of the underwear this morning. I forgot. We split sometimes when there’s not time. But I can’t imagine it without him around. Oh, my God!

TB: You say it’s getting faster and faster. Is it getting harder to manage?

SG: It’s technology’s fault. What used to take one day now takes three hours. And the other five hours . . . You’re doing more, more, faster, faster. Everything is too quick. Sometimes I would like to stop. I love to move, but not as quickly as now. Cruise, pre-Fall, on and on . . . You think the customer understands them? Needs them? I don’t think so. Only the fashion system understands. But I don’t work for the fashion system. I work 80 percent for the customer.

TB: You own your own company—nobody owns you. And it’s a billion-dollar business. How’s that for a responsibility?

SG: If you tell me I have 3,600 employees, I’m not afraid, but I don’t feel comfortable. But if you don’t tell me anything, I don’t think about it. I know what we are. I know what we do. I would love to think the same way I did 20 years ago, because I don’t want to lose the sense of freedom. I don’t want to change my life for this big company.

TB: It’s trying to staying pure, isn’t it?

DD: No, pure is impossible, because we have meetings every two weeks about the business all over the world. But if you use this information like anxiety, you kill the creativity. So, first, you are free. We have a huge company, and we make what we want.

TB: Do you wear only your own clothes?

SG: No. I like to buy different things. [pointing at Domenico] Oh, look at the face. Look, look!

DD: Because he wants to lose money. He’s so rich, he loses his money on other designers.

TB: Which designers do you buy?

SG: Swimwear from Vuitton, an Hermès sweater, this shirt by Pucci . . .

DD: He buys them and then he gives them away because he doesn’t wear them. Sometimes I think he does it just to annoy me.

TB: Do your boyfriends ever get jealous of your relationship?

SG: If so, it’s too bad for them. We are really good friends—that’s it, like brothers. We are family. I say Domenico is the first person in my life. If you don’t like it, it’s your problem.

TB: Do you think your relationship is unusual?

DD: Very unusual.

SG: Our relationship is also a very good example for everybody in the world, gay and straight. Because our love story continued, without sex and without living together. Why not? He was the first big love story in my life. Why do we need to cancel that? And I don’t want to forget it.

TB: Do you think you’ll end up together again?

SG: But we do live together. No, not together, but he lives on one floor and I live on another. I don’t know what he does in the night with his boyfriend. And I don’t care, really.

DD: No, listen to me. Let me tell you about last night. You were supposed to call me. My boyfriend had a fever so he couldn’t go out, and you said, “Ciao. I’ll call you later. We’ll go to dinner.”

SG: And I forgot and I didn’t call him.

DD: And I’m waiting for dinner. Yesterday I didn’t eat, and I told him that. And I waited. And on Saturday night I stayed home because my boyfriend had a fever, and I fell asleep on the sofa in front of the TV, and then I wake up and I hear the noise, boom, boom. I think maybe it’s the air conditioner. I turn off the TV and it’s boom, boom, boom, over my kitchen.

SG: Because Giovanna [Battaglia, erstwhile house model, now a contributing fashion editor at L’Uomo Vogue] was there, dancing like Madonna in the “Give It 2 Me” video. 

DD: Boom, boom, boom. I think, maybe he’s fighting with some people. The day after, I called him: “Did you organize a dance yesterday in your home?” No. Nothing. 

SG: I had 10 people in the kitchen—friends of mine.

DD: Boom, boom, boom.

SG: We drink and smoke before we go out. And when she arrived, Giovanna wanted to dance.

TB: What do you think is going to happen to you, in 10 years, say?