Monica Bellucci leans against a balcony rail in Capri, 1995

Monica Bellucci leans against a balcony rail in Capri, 1995. Black lace dress, bare shoulders, a cigarette between her fingers. The photograph ran in Vogue Italia and became shorthand for everything Dolce & Gabbana understood about the female body: curve, defiance, and a kind of Mediterranean fatalism that doesn't translate well north of Milan. Bellucci was not the first woman to define the house, but she was the clearest. Before her, there was Marpessa. After, there would be Scarlett. Three women, three decades, three versions of the same archetype—dark-haired, full-figured, unrepentant.

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana built their brand on a single thesis: Italian women do not apologise for their bodies. The Sicilian grandmother in mourning black. The young mother in a slip dress at Sunday Mass. The mistress in a corset, smoking on a fire escape. These were not fantasies. They were observations, sharpened into clothes that clung and revealed and required confidence to wear. The designers needed faces to match. They found them.

Marpessa: the archetype

Marpessa Hennink arrived in Milan in 1987, already a known quantity. Dutch, not Italian, but with the colouring and bearing that read as Mediterranean under the right light. Dolce & Gabbana were two seasons into their partnership, showing in a rented loft with borrowed chairs. Marpessa walked their spring 1988 collection in a black bustier and high-waisted trousers, hair pulled back, no jewellery. The silhouette was pure postwar Italy—Sophia Loren in Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Anna Magnani in anything. But the cut was sharper, the fabrics lighter. Marpessa made it look like something a woman might actually wear to seduce her husband's business partner.

She became the house's first recurring face. Not a muse in the precious sense—Dolce & Gabbana were not precious men—but a physical template. Marpessa's body was athletic, not waiflike. Her walk was long and slow. She wore their corsets as if they were T-shirts, their lace as if it were cotton. By 1990, she had appeared in four of their campaigns, always in black or white, always shot in stark natural light. The clothes looked like armour. Marpessa looked like she didn't need it.

The partnership dissolved quietly. Marpessa moved to New York, then out of fashion entirely. But the template remained. When Dolce & Gabbana cast their shows in the nineties, they looked for women with hips, with presence, with the ability to make a corset look like daywear. Marpessa had set the standard. Everyone else was an echo.

Monica: the apex

Monica Bellucci was already famous when Dolce & Gabbana cast her in 1991. She had done campaigns for Dior and Elle, walked for Valentino, appeared in bit parts in Italian films. But she was not yet Monica Bellucci, the woman whose face would define a particular strain of European beauty for the next two decades. Dolce & Gabbana made that happen.

The first campaign ran in 1992. Bellucci in a black lace dress, photographed by Ferdinando Scianna in a Sicilian village square. The dress was sheer enough to suggest everything, opaque enough to reveal nothing. Bellucci's expression was bored, faintly amused, as if she had been interrupted mid-thought. The image became iconic not because it was provocative—though it was—but because it looked true. This was not a model pretending to be a woman. This was a woman who happened to be wearing a very good dress.

Bellucci appeared in twelve Dolce & Gabbana campaigns between 1992 and 2006. She wore their corsets in Malèna, their gowns on red carpets, their sunglasses in paparazzi shots. The relationship was symbiotic. Dolce & Gabbana gave Bellucci the wardrobe that matched her persona. Bellucci gave Dolce & Gabbana legitimacy beyond the runway. She was not a hanger. She was a woman with a career, a life, a body that changed over time. The clothes changed with her.

The campaigns from the late nineties are the clearest distillation of the house's aesthetic. Bellucci in a slip dress, smoking. Bellucci in a corset, laughing. Bellucci in a black suit, staring down the camera. The settings were always Italian—village squares, coastal roads, sunlit bedrooms—but the mood was cinematic. Dolce & Gabbana understood that their clothes worked best in motion, on bodies that moved with purpose. Bellucci moved like someone who had somewhere to be.

She left the house's orbit in the mid-2000s, not through any public rupture but through the quiet drift of careers moving in different directions. By then, the archetype was set. Dolce & Gabbana's woman was Monica. Everyone else was a variation.

Scarlett: the American translation

Scarlett Johansson does not look Italian. She is blonde, pale, American in the specific way that suggests the Midwest by way of New York. But when Dolce & Gabbana cast her in 2009, they were not looking for another Monica. They were looking for someone who could translate the archetype to a different audience. Johansson had the body—curves in an era of straight lines—and the presence. She also had the box office.

The first campaign ran in 2009, shot by Steven Meisel in a Hollywood soundstage dressed to look like a Sicilian villa. Johansson wore a black lace dress, red lipstick, her hair in soft waves. The image was a direct reference to the Bellucci campaigns, but softer, more polished. This was not a woman smoking on a balcony. This was a woman preparing for a premiere.

Johansson appeared in six campaigns between 2009 and 2012, always in black or red, always in high glamour. The clothes were less about seduction than about power. Corsets gave way to tailored suits. Slip dresses gave way to gowns with structure. Dolce & Gabbana were dressing a different kind of woman now—younger, richer, more global. Johansson fit the brief. She wore their clothes to the Met Gala, to film premieres, to magazine covers. She made them look expensive.

The partnership ended in 2012, around the time Johansson's career shifted toward action films and Dolce & Gabbana's campaigns shifted toward influencers and celebrities with larger social followings. But Johansson had done what she was hired to do. She had taken the archetype—dark, curvy, confident—and made it work in a context where dark hair and Mediterranean fatalism were no longer prerequisites. The template had evolved.

What remains

Dolce & Gabbana's campaigns now feature a rotating cast of actresses, models, and musicians, often a dozen faces per season. The aesthetic has softened, the references more varied. But the through line remains. The house still casts women with hips, with presence, with the ability to make a corset look like something other than a costume. Marpessa set the template. Monica perfected it. Scarlett proved it could travel.

The clothes have changed less than you might expect. The corsets are still there, the lace, the high-waisted trousers. The silhouette is still postwar Italy, still Sophia Loren, still the Sicilian grandmother in her best black dress. Dolce & Gabbana have never been interested in reinvention. They found their thesis in 1987 and have spent the past three decades refining it. The muses change. The archetype does not.