Dolce and Gabbana's 2017 Spring Collection

The Dolce & Gabbana Spring ready-to-wear show was a good vantage point for observing how the old-fashioned runway system is being questioned—pushed by digital technology to the brink of falling apart. Stefano Gabbana is the social media–savvy, fast-reacting, hilariously self-mocking one on Instagram.

Domenico Dolce is the hands-on tailor-couturier with a huge Southern Italian heritage behind him. At one and the same time, these two were some of the first enthusiasts of the changing media (live-streaming, bloggers front row), while also becoming pioneers of the long, slow, excessively luxuriant “experiential” travel habit, which has now taken over the summer schedule.

If you whittle all that down, these guys have been Italian fashion’s best advocates for bringing the outside in—and these days, thanks to the invention of the cell phone camera, all that life, detail, movement, history, and exuberance can be captured, shared, pored over, and treasured by all.

With their Spring collection, they brought in 20 “millennials,” from Lucky Blue Smith and his sisters to Luka Sabbat and
Cameron Dallas . They also put on an energetic, democratic kids’ performance—street dancers, up from Naples, who occupied the runway, in their own clothes with their wild fusion of hip-hop and the ancient bloodline heritage of the Neapolitan tarantella.



Source: Vogue