A series of religious Byzantine and Venetian murals made up the invitation to yesterday's Dolce & Gabbana's show. Many were taken from the walls of the Cathedral of Monreale in Sicily, where these gilded works, dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, cover almost seventy thousand square feet of the building itself. That same sense of iconographic excess and feeling of devotion became the very premise for the collection.
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana printed these religious images onto dresses and separates, creating their own adaptation by adding texture, heavy beading and colourful embellishments. Models appeared on the runway wearing gilded crowns and large gold crucifix earnings, almost becoming religious icons themselves. Silhouettes ranged from longer evening dresses, to shorter skirts and box-like mini dresses. Then sheer black lace began to appear, peeking out under the hems of printed dresses or making up a top to sit alongside a corseted skirt.
Their colour palette began to narrate acts of religious devotion, white became a symbol of purity, black a representation of mourning, and the incredible bold red that closed their show a nod to power and passion. The duo even referenced their own archive, sending a sculptured metallic gold corset down the runway, heavily adored with big coloured gems. That's a signature piece, which seemed fitting for a collection routed in worship and the iconic.
Precision and optical illusion defined the Iceberg show. As the collection unfolded, it told the story of geometric possibilities – opening with sharp leather lines that formed across on the body, before moving onto stripes, block coloured sleeves and closing with a finale of vivid prints.
Within the strict linear regularity of the collection, colour burst onto designs. It was used to dramatic effect, highlighting these ordered shapes by offering one white and one yellow sleeve on a black jumper, or by combining yellow, beige and white stripes on a woollen dress. By the end of the collection, it has reached a new extreme when psychedelic acid prints emerged on dresses, or featured as beaded as sequins on oversized knitwear.
