Dolce & Gabbana

Two Designers, One Milan House

Dolce & Gabbana SpA is a high-end designer company owned by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana and based in Milan. The two founders arrived by different routes. Dolce was born on September 13, 1958, in Polizzi Generosa, Italy, and received a fashion education, working in the small clothing factory his family owned. Gabbana was born on November 14, 1962, in Venice, Italy, and studied graphic design as a student. In 1980 the duo met when they worked at the same atelier in Venice; they began to do freelance design in 1982, and when their first collection was shown in 1986 it received acclaim from around the globe. Four years later they revealed their premiere menswear collection and opened a women's boutique in Milan, and in 1990 they also started designing for the Complice line for the Genny Group in Milan. The fashion house has published a book chronicling 10 years of Dolce & Gabbana history, and the company is placed on the same line of couture houses as Armani, Versace, Gucci, Prada and Moschino.

Two Brands at Two Levels

The company is organised into two central brands. D&G generally forms the group's more casual lines with cheaper prices, while Dolce & Gabbana centralises on haute couture and expensive price tags. The split lets one company speak at two levels of the market at once: a customer can meet the name first in its casual, cheaper form, while the main brand keeps the couture position that the cheaper line borrows its glamour from. Within each brand there is Beachwear, and separately Dolce & Gabbana underwear, so the two-tier structure repeats across categories rather than stopping at outerwear. The retail expansion followed the same outward path: the first store in the United States opened in March 1995 in the Galleria, in Houston's fashion district, and a boom in interest called for boutiques in other major cosmopolitan cities all over the world, until their boutiques became a symbol of high fashion and couture.

Designed for Hollywood

Dolce & Gabbana are very popular for their designs in the Hollywood industry. They have designed clothes for Madonna, Monica Bellucci, Isabella Rossellini, Kylie Minogue, Jennifer Lopez and Angelina Jolie, amongst others. That list is itself a description of the house's position: singers and film stars whose public images depend on being photographed, wearing a Milan label whose name is carried by the people seen in it. The celebrity connection is presented as a defining feature of the company, on the same level as its Milan base and its two-brand structure.

A Love Split, Not a Business Split

The private life of Dolce and Gabbana became public in 2004, when they officially announced their separation, and on 20 February 2005 they announced they would split up after 19 years. The company, they made clear, would stay the same, and they would continue to design together. Gabbana's own wording drew the line precisely: this is a love split, not a business split; Domenico and he were still very good friends; as for the working relationship, they were still very much together; and business, in fact, had never been better. The distinction is the point of the episode — a personal partnership that had run alongside the company since 1980 ended, while the design partnership, the ownership and the two brands continued unchanged.