Dolce & Gabbana
Started in the mid 1980s, by 2005 their turnover was €750 million.
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Lines
There are two distinct lines in the company.
Dolce&Gabbana - without spaces - specialises in luxury designer items, more classic in approach. It also sells accessories such as sunglasses, purses, watches and fragrances for men and women.
D&G - again without spaces - is more casual and "street" inspired. It is younger and more flamboyant and sells mainly clothing with some watches.
History
The company was started by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana who met whilst working as assistants to an atelier in Milan. They made their name together in 1985 when the organisers of the Milano Collezioni invited them to take part in a fashion show to launch new talent. The following year, they presented their first independent women's ready-to-wear show. Since then, they have introduced menswear and a line of signature fragrances, and opened shops in Italy, Japan, Hong Kong and, in 1999, in London.
D&G trademarks include underwear-as-outerwear (such as corsets and bra fastenings), gangster boss pinstripe suits, extravagantly printed and embroidered coats, and black. They once admitted that they wouldn't mind if their only contribution to fashion history was a black bra.
They are also well known for thier powerful advertising campaigns such as the black-and-white La Sicilia, featuring model Marpessa photographed by Ferdinando Scianna in 1987. But fundamentally they are known for making women simply look sexy.
"They find their way out of any black dress, any buttoned-up blouse," says Rossellini. "The first piece of theirs I wore was a white shirt, very chaste, but cut to make my breasts look as if they were bursting out of it."
Controversies
- Some Dolce & Gabbana advertisements have been withdrawn following suggestions they were too suggestive or provocative. One showed a man holding a woman down by the wrists whilst a group of other men looked on. The positioning of the participants and the atmostphere was suggested by some to imply sexual coercion and it was banned from publication in Italy; it had already been banned from Spain.
- In May 2009 the government charged Dolce & Gabbana with tax evasion resulting from having moved assets out of the country to Luzembourg for the purposes of avoiding tax. This totalled about 250 million euro. Since then the company has been accused of more than 1bn euro in tax evasion, however very little has been reported in the Italian press.
Video
Recent D&G controversial ad.
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