Promoted by the Municipality of Milan - Culture and produced by Palazzo Reale and IMG, lhe exhibition is curated by Florence Müller, internationally renowned teacher and author, former director of the Union Française des Arts du Costume at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and curator of Fashion and Textile Art at the Denver Art Museum, and chooses Milan as the first stop on an international itinerary that will include some of
most important cultural centers in the world.
“From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce&Gabbana” is a declaration of love for Italian culture
Inspiration and muse of the spirit of the brand since its origins, and retraces the extraordinary creative process of its founders: from the heart, from which ideas arise, to the hands, the means through which they take shape. The devotion that the fashion house has always reserved for Fatto a Mano translates into a unique dialogue between
artisan tradition and contemporaneity. Also on display at Palazzo Reale are a series of immersive installations and specially commissioned digital works of art, in which the multiple languages of creativity are placed in dialogue with the unique creations of the brand, building a journey through the cardinal themes of Dolce&Gabbana's style : from visual arts to architecture, from music to Italian traditions, from theater to dolce vita.
The exhibition is an invitation to discover the creative universe of Dolce and Gabbana through their collections of Alta Moda, Alta Sartoria and Alta Gioielleria
The deep connection with traditional Italian artisan techniques aroused in them the desire to venture into haute couture after having successfully founded their ready-to-wear maison already in 1985. Thanks to the richness of their family roots, Sicilian for Domenico Dolce and Milanese for Stefano Gabbana, the stylists imagine collections with numerous artistic and cultural references drawn from painting, architecture, sculpture, interior design or the performing arts... Their creations are presented in the most iconic places in Italy, which recall in a spectacular way the sources of inspiration of the fashion shows. Under their guidance, the artist-craftsmen surpass themselves in the exercise of their craft, inventing the innovations of tomorrow starting from ancient know-how. Precisely because they are today among the rare stylists who are both founders and owners of their fashion house, and therefore free of their actions, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were able to realize this dream. Driven by the desire to pay homage to the passion of those who create beauty with the intelligence of their hands.
A journey, this is the meaning of this exhibition; an interior journey, a Grand Tour among the beauties of Italy, a journey among different sources of imagination and inspiration, a journey dreamed, sought, pursued and finally realized, a journey in which fashion is not the center of the exhibition but it is one of its expressive elements. A journey that starts from the heart, which etymologically takes us immediately back to harmony, to embrace, to the affective and sentimental dimension of our existence, and which reaches the hand, also conceived in its etymological dimension of building, measuring, preparing and therefore of doing. A journey that is paradigmatic of how s The creativity of two designers known on a global level has been forming, in search of its primordial constituents, of its active ingredients; an invitation to all of us, who perhaps are neither artists, nor stylists, nor writers, to create ourselves, questioning ourselves on the landscapes we have seen, on the places we have lived or simply visited, on the films that have fascinated us, on the books that we devoured, on the music that cradled us, on the works of art that our eyes were satisfied with, our personal and intimate album of suggestions, impressions, thoughts; to invent our "Museum of Innocence" because, ultimately and ultimately, we need to know how to respond to the Socratic invitation to know ourselves, the gnothi seautón inscribed on the pediment of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. A journey in which natural beauty and that created by the genius of Man meet, a synesthetic journey in which our senses are overwhelmed by the luminous phantasmagoria of Sicily and its traditions, by the sumptuous and at the same time decadent settings of the Leopard, by the intimacy of devotion, from the visual spectacle offered by Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture, from the glitter of Byzantine mosaics, from the myth of the Olympic deities, from the ecstasy of opera.
An itinerary in which, starting from the heart and therefore from the soul, we encounter the passion and expertise of the hand, of the know-how which becomes a hymn to our great artisan traditions, to that wisdom, patiently learned over the centuries, which is a significant figure of the reputation that the whole world recognizes in our Italy and for which this exhibition offers a sincere declaration of love. Edith Wharton, Pulitzer Prize winner in 1921 for The Age of Innocence, wondered whether it made sense for her to stay elsewhere when she could have stayed in Italy. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have given an answer, with their story distilled in this exhibition. Domenico Piraina Director of Culture and Director of the Royal Palace
