Interview

DD: I don’t know. I only think about this afternoon. Tomorrow is another day. 

SG: In this moment you need to think about now. Maybe tomorrow morning, not afternoon.

TB: Well, what would you like to happen?

SG: What might happen, I don’t know, but I would love to continue my job, because this is my life.

DD: I don’t want to stop, but I think there is a time when the creativity stops. At the time when you understand that it’s not your moment anymore, you move aside for another actor. Like in the theater.

SG: But I would love to stay on in the backstage.

TB: You could be Clint Eastwood. He’s 78, still directing, still acting.

DD: You need to be very intelligent. And you need to not be egotistical.

TB: What about Madonna?

SG: The product that she sells is herself. We don’t sell us. I sell people something from my hand, from my mind. Not my person. It’s different.

TB: Do she’s in a trap?

DD: No. She’s Madonna. She’s one name, one history. She’s very strong.

TB: When you read her brother’s book, did you think, Oh, I’m a bit like that?

SG: No, because I’m not. I’m not called Madonna Ciccone. My name is Stefano Gabbana. I’m a different person. Every person is different in the world.

TB: Do you think you have to be quite hard to be as successful as you’ve been? 

DD: I don’t work for money. That’s not why I do it. I don’t care about money.

SG: We continue in this job because we love it. When we started, we didn’t wish to become popular. We were ambitious, but not for money. We just wanted to express ourselves.

DD: Every season we look at all the shows by other designers. The designers we love a lot—I don’t want to say which, but there are three—make me angry with myself. Why don’t I design my collection much better than this? My competition is not with the others, it’s with myself.

SG: I remember when Azzedine Alaïa, for example, did a fantastic collection in the ’80s, and I said, “Wow, why can’t we do this?”

DD: Why didn’t we think of this? Are we stupid? Sei un cretino? 

SG: I love Azzedine’s work, but I would love to do it before him, you know? But we’re not jealous.

DD: If you envy other people you never grow. I love two or three designers a lot. For me, they are new energy. But I’m old . . .

TB: Excuse me?

SG: No, we are not old in age. Old because . . .

TB: Because you’ve been around a long time? I feel like something happened a few seasons ago for you. It definitely felt to me that you just decided, “Fuck that. I can do what I want to do now.”

SG: Yeah, because we are more mature.

DD: I turned 50, and I’m very happy at this moment. I dreamed this job—I came to Milan and my dream came true. So maybe I’m more wise, more rooted. When you are 30 or 40, you are like . . . [makes gasping sound] So this is my new age. Next year is the first year of my new age.

TB: Thank you very much. That was a long interview, wasn’t it?

DD: We talked about life.