The Bite Magazine - Autumn/Winter 2021 - Issue 30

bitecatwalk I ’m never going to admit to how old I am but my childhood included the whole of the ‘90s, and I think that’s why D&G’s latest collection for Milan Fashion Week was my favour - ite. It was like watching a super intense, bordering on gaudy but in the best way, full kaleidoscope on the parade of my beloved Rainbow Bright/Barbie/Lisa Frank saturated world come to life. I mean, seriously, there was even a robot that rolled down the runway very much like an updated Short Circuit droid. As is with any D&G show and their known-for glamours and highly theatrical runway presentations, this collection was flawlessly styled and expertly delivered. The theme and inspiration behind this collection were how is D&G going to capture the future? How are we going to speak the language and deliver to the desires of the current e-girl and e-boy generation of Instagram and TikTok? Ergo, taking major cues from how these social-media-savvy heavy-hit- ters are becoming more and more obsessed with '90s pop culture, and taking what was thought to be the idea of what the future would be then and modernising it for today (and tomorrow), is a bit of a mind-bender. Pulling from this desire to dress for the future, D&G created a match between tech and fashion providing an opportunity for them to collide to form a highly harmonised product that not only looks and feels current but is cutting edge and functional. As hinted at in the men’s show, this space-age theme was carried out by the brand partnering with Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), to create blended fabrics like wools with plastics. For example, one pair of pants looked like a run or streaming code, a jacket looked like it had been pixilated, a censor screen and a snow screen. They also used iCub and R1 multifunctional humanoids which IIT specialised in as fore - runners in developing service Artificial Intelligence robots as artistic and functional centrepieces. Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce commented in a press release about their work with ITT. “It is incredible to think how man's cleverness and determination can give life to new forms of intelligence, which can learn from their own experience and be deployed in the medical, environmental and social fields. Fashion has always been the result of the confluence of worlds that can be very far from each other: if technology is truly serving the man, his needs and his pas- sions, then a craftsman and a robot will be able to coexist." However, when speaking about the clothes themselves, the entire thing viewed was like those Daft Punk’s anime music videos. This outlandish and wildly fun, vibrant and amaz- ingly youthful colour palette and range of everything from harkening ‘90s oversized printed t-shirts to high-waisted ‘mom-jeans’ in neon and acid wash, swinging crop top, really boxy and oversized patchwork blazer, the use of shoulder pads, puffer coats, and clunky lace-up combat boots and bucket hats to name a few. The 135 looks rang in a new frontier of what may indeed be the future of how we’ll all be dressing very soon. Dressing for fun and function with a dramatic sense of humour. www.dolcegabbana.com/en DOLCE & GABBANA