Inspired by Artificial Intelligence and the brand’s iconic looks from the ’90s, the Dolce & Gabbana Fall/Winter 2021 collection fused craftsmanship and technology, and also revisited and reimagined the brand’s ’90s collections for modern times.
The Italian designers collaborated with Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, a Genoa-based scientific research center that specializes in artificial intelligence and ‘’service robotics’’. With a little coding, researchers made the bots capable of generating some of the collection’s whopping 135 looks.
Futurism was instantly apparent at the start of the show, as a model sporting a rainbow ‘’e-girl’’ wig and shiny gloves and boots strode down the runway in a holographic plastic cover-up. This was Dolce & Gabbana unlike any D&G you’ve seen before. And yet, there were traces of the familiar. Expressed in bionic shapes, some silhouettes evoked the armored bustiers of the spring 2007 collection, itself a superhuman take on the designers’ corseted, black boudoir wardrobe of the ’90s.
As for the more contemporary touches, a number of the humans were draped in clear PVC. It’s a reminder of D&G’s past with Aqua, the group that famously proclaimed ‘’life in plastic, it’s fantastic’’, or ‘’imagination, life is your creation’’, though in the present, it may call to mind PPE.