Dolce & Gabbana

Designers duo Domenico Dolce (b. 1958, near Palermo, Sicily) and Stefano Gabbana (b.1962, Milan, Italy) are today known for making "stars truly look like stars". Their sexy styles are often to be seen on the likes of celebrities such as Isabella Rossellini, Demi Moore, Nicole Kidman and Madonna, for whom they created the now-famous "Kylie Minogue" tribute T-shirt. They also created the costumes for Madonna's "Girlie Show" in 1993, as well as Whitney Houston's 1999 tour.

Partners both in life and in business, the pair met whilst working as assistants in an atelier in Milan. Sharing a great passion for the baroque, they made their name together in 1985, when the organisers of the Milano Collezioni invited them to take part in a fashion show in order to launch "New Talents". During the following year, they decided to present 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 (the London salon, designed by British architect David Chipperfield, is proof to the designers' love of bringing together their own Mediterranean spirit together with English eccentricity).

Inspired originally by eclectic, thrift shop Bohemia, Dolce & Gabbana's very colourful, animal prints have been described as "haute hippydom" taking inspiration in particular from Italy's prestigious history of film. "When we design it's very often like a movie," says Domenico Dolce. "We think of a story and we design the clothes that can go with it." They claim to be more concerned about creating the best, most flattering clothes than in sparking trends, once admitting that they wouldn't mind if their only contribution to fashion history was a very beautiful black bra.

D&G trademarks encompass underwear-as-outerwear (such as corsets and bra fastenings), gangster boss pinstripe suits, extravagantly printed and superbly embroidered coats, and lots of black garments. In the mean time their fetish-meets-femininity collections are always backed by powerful ad campaigns, such as the black-and-white "La Sicilia" advertisement, featuring model Marpessa photographed by Ferdinando Scianna in 1987. More than anything else however, they are known for making women look and feel incredibly sexy. "They find their way out of any black dress, any buttoned-up blouse," describes Rossellini. "The first piece of theirs I wore was a white shirt, very chaste, but which was cut to make my breasts look as if it were bursting out of it."

Once dubbed the "Gilbert and George of Italian fashion", Dolce and Gabbana gave their fashion interests a slightly musical turn in 1996, through the recording of their very own single, in which they sang the words "D&G is love" over a techno beat. Newer to the design game than other heavyweight Italian fashion houses such as Versace and Armani, the pair do acknowledge very often that luck has very much played its part in their phenomenal rise to fame and success.

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