MILAN: Dolce & Gabbana opened the gates of fashion heaven on in a spectacular catwalk show featuring drones, one of the last events of Milan’s popular fashion week.
Church chants welcomed guests with the gates of heaven used as a background to the catwalk. “Fashion Devotion” read a golden sign over golden gates and a flurry of angels and clouds.
At the show’s start, bells chimed, the gates opened and drones flew out, carrying the brand’s handbags down the catwalk.
In previous shows the famous designer duo had asked young so-called influencers to showcase their designs, turning to bloggers and Instagrammers who have millions of followers and are seen as style icons by their fans. But this time Dolce & Gabbana returned to professional models.
The collection, rich and opulent as usual by Dolce & Gabbana, featured church-influenced designs such as a big black cape draped over a white t-shirt, a priest collar combined with an elegant damasked tuxedo and a cassock-looking dress with red finishes paired with high-heeled red sandals.
Other references to heaven included cartoon-esque angels wearing sunglasses, which were on skirts and on a ornate bronze bomber jacket, with wings coming out of the model’s back.
‘Fashion sinner’, ‘D&G devotion’ and ‘Santa moda ora pro nobis’, Holy fashion pray for us read some of the clothes, with reference to prayers.
The fall-winter collection also intertwined all of the fashion house’s iconic traits such as black lace, tight-fitting black dresses, veils, references to Italy’s southern traditions and costumes as well as flowers.
Other designs were bright and glittered and paired with exuberant accessories, such as a big pink wig, glass frames with cartoon exclamations and neon green fur stilettos.
Tommy Hilfiger showcases fast-paced fashion
US designer Tommy Hilfiger embraced the so-called “see now, buy now” strategy with his ‘TommyNow Drive’ collection, bringing the curtains down on Milan Fashion Week with a show featuring fast cars and even faster fashion. TommyNow is about the democratisation of fashion and pioneering the see-now-buy-now movement, said a company note.
All items of the collection were available on the brand’s online shop the moment they went down the runway, with some already on the racks of a temporary shop set up at the venue, an exhibition centre dressed up as an Formula 1 circuit. “It’s awesome to be able to shop like this. People have become impatient — I am not going to wait six months to buy clothes that I see on catwalks now,” said Nadia Meier, a customer from Salzburg attending the event.
With fashion brands under pressure to deliver collections faster to their younger customers, companies are finding themselves juggling constant demand for new clothes and accessories and the long manufacturing process required for their products.
Britain’s Mulberry is the latest label to usher in a “see now, buy now” model — cutting out the usual six-month delay in delivering a runway collection to stores — two years after Burberry started. But the business model is still far from becoming an industry standard. “I find (see now, buy now) a cool initiative. It allows customers to participate more … you watch the models, you touch the items and then buy them,” said Italian Giulia Battaglia, who had just bought a 130-euro jumper.
The collection was the fourth and last to be co-designed by celebrity model Gigi Hadid and Hilfiger. Milan was the latest lap of the itinerant fashion show, which has gone through London’s Roadhouse concert venue, New York and Los Angeles. The designs were worn by celebrity models like Hadid, her sister Bella and brother Anwar, Lucky Blue and Canadian Winnie Harlow.
They many biker-inspired looks with leather trousers and jackets, cropped tops as well as striped bathing suits and more “preppy” looks, a style frequently associated with Hilfiger, including boyfriend jeans, blouses and jumpers with crests. As models walked down the ring-shaped catwalks, mechanics worked on Mercedes Formula 1 cars parked at the centre, with men dressed with white pilot suits and helmets standing on the sides of the catwalk.
