Dolce & Gabbana reaffirms brand’s identity with achromatics in Milan

The pair have rarely strayed from the brand’s idealised vision of Italian archetypes. For women, it is the Sicilian widow – and the mistress. Photograph: Alessandro Garofalo/Reuters

Neither Dolce nor Gabbana would comment on the all-white casting that clouded their menswear show in January, though it seems they read the headlines. More than a third of the looks at their womenswear show in Milan on Saturday were modelled by women of colour.

Instead, they wanted to talk about identity. Not politics, but more tellingly, theirs. “Our collections speak to us, our identity, our values,” said the pair after the show. “We never wanted to follow trends.” Their aim instead, they said, was to make “instantly recognisable” clothes that “when you see [them] … you think: ‘Oh, that’s Dolce & Gabbana,’ without reading the label.”