The brocade corset at the Milan flagship this season is not subtle
The brocade corset at the Milan flagship this season is not subtle. Gold thread, black lace, bones visible through sheer panels. It sits in the window next to a crystal-encrusted phone case shaped like a cannolo. Both objects are sincere. That is the first thing to understand about Dolce & Gabbana in 2025: the house does not wink.
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana opened their atelier in 1985, the same year Gaultier sent cone bras down the runway in Paris. But where Gaultier quoted, Dolce & Gabbana stated. The silhouette was southern Italian, specific to Sicily, drawn from the widows in Polizzi Generosa where Domenico Dolce was born. Black lace over skin. Corsetry as structure, not as costume. The first collection showed in Milan in 1986 to six editors. By 1990 Madonna was wearing the house on stage, and the vocabulary was set: black, lace, crucifix, bra as outerwear, opacity and transparency in alternating panels.
The peak came in the late nineties and early 2000s. Revenue climbed past €1 billion by 2006. The advertising was unapologetic — men in undershirts, women in slips, everyone damp and Sicilian and selling not a lifestyle but a fantasy with geographic coordinates. The house opened stores in every major city. Fragrance became a vertical. Light Blue launched in 2001 and still moves units. The brand extended into eyewear, watches, children's wear, alta moda. By 2012 Dolce & Gabbana was a €1.6 billion business, privately held, with the designers still at the helm.
The fracture and the recovery
In 2013 the Italian tax authorities accused Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana of evading €1 billion in taxes through a Luxembourg holding structure. The designers were convicted in 2013, acquitted on appeal in 2014, convicted again in 2015, then fully acquitted by Italy's highest court in 2016. The three-year cycle damaged the house less than what came after.
In 2018 the maison prepared to stage a major show in Shanghai. The promotional campaign included a video of a Chinese model attempting to eat pizza, spaghetti, and cannoli with chopsticks while a male voiceover offered instructions in Mandarin. The reaction was immediate. The show was cancelled. Chinese retailers pulled Dolce & Gabbana from shelves. The designers apologised on video. The house lost an estimated 30 percent of its business in the region within a year.
Then in 2021 the recovery began, quietly. Dolce & Gabbana re-entered China through Tmall and selective wholesale partnerships. The alta moda shows continued — Siracusa, Venice, Lago di Como — drawing private clients who spend six figures on a single gown. Kim Kardashian wore archive pieces throughout 2022. The house began working with younger stylists who pulled from the nineties shows, recontextualising the slip dress and the lace bra top for a generation who had not lived through the original campaigns.
Revenue in 2023 reached an estimated €1.8 billion. The house remains privately held. Domenico Dolce is 66. Stefano Gabbana is 62. There is no succession plan on record.
The creative position now
The spring 2025 collection showed in Milan in September. The set was a Italian garden, statues and hedges and gravel paths. The models wore lace blouses over visible bras, high-waisted trousers in pinstripe wool, corsets laced over bare skin, skirts cut to mid-calf with uneven hems. The palette was black, white, red, gold. The silhouette has not moved in 20 years. That is the point.
Dolce & Gabbana does not chase trend cycles. The house restates its vocabulary each season with minor variations in hemline and fabrication. A corset this year has slightly wider boning than the corset from 2003. The lace is sourced from the same Cluny mill. The models are younger now, cast from Instagram rather than agencies, but the clothes remain addressed to the same customer: a woman who wants to be looked at and does not apologise for it.
The men's line operates on the same principle. The spring 2025 men's show opened with shirtless models in high-waisted trousers, gold chains at the neck, hair slicked back. The tailoring was sharp through the shoulder, nipped at the waist, flared slightly at the trouser hem. The references were clear: southern Italian men in the 1950s, the kind who stood outside cafés in undershirts and dress trousers and made it look like formalwear. Dolce & Gabbana has been making this suit for 30 years. The house sells it every season.
The business model and its limits
Dolce & Gabbana operates 250 directly owned stores. The flagship in Milan spans three floors on Corso Venezia. The house also runs a significant wholesale business, though the Chinese market remains smaller than it was in 2017. Fragrance and beauty account for an estimated 30 percent of revenue. Alta moda, the twice-yearly haute couture equivalent, brings in private clients who spend between €100,000 and €500,000 per order. These shows are invitation-only, staged in Italian heritage sites, attended by approximately 200 guests. The house does not disclose alta moda revenue, but industry analysts estimate it contributes 10 to 15 percent of total sales.
The challenge is generational. Dolce & Gabbana's core customer is now in her 40s or 50s. She has disposable income and an affinity for the brand's unapologetic femininity. But younger consumers, particularly those under 30, do not have the same reference points. The nineties campaigns that defined the house are not part of their visual memory. When a 22-year-old buys Dolce & Gabbana now, she is often buying it secondhand, pulled by a stylist, worn once for content, then resold.
The house has responded by leaning into its archive. Collaborations with Mytheresa and Farfetch have highlighted vintage pieces. The Instagram account regularly reposts images from the nineties shows. But this is curation by the market, not by the designers. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana continue to design clothes for the customer they have always dressed. Whether that customer will exist in 10 years is the question the house has not answered.
What remains
At the Venice alta moda show in August 2024, the final look was a wedding gown. White lace, long sleeves, a train that required two attendants. The model walked alone down a candlelit aisle in the Arsenale, and the gown moved like a separate organism, heavy with embroidery and boning and 400 hours of handwork. The applause lasted 30 seconds. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana did not take a bow. They stood at the side and watched the dress leave the room.
That is the house now. Still making the same garments. Still addressing the same fantasy. The corset has not softened. The lace has not become ironic. Dolce & Gabbana is not interested in redefining itself for a new era. The question is whether the era will come back around.
