How to Live Your Best Dolce Vita Camp and Glamour According to Dolce&Gabbana

Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce named their latest menswear collection (FW2025) Paparazzi, clearly referencing to Federico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita and the name of one of its protagonists, photographer Coriolano Paparazzo, from which this word entered all of the world’s languages. Serving as decoration on both sides of the red velvet curtains, from which the models emerged, were rows of young men dressed in perfect Dolce & Gabbana tuxedos, clicking camera shutters and blinding everyone with flashes.

As always, Dolce & Gabbana, the true masters of camp, presented an extensive collection of nearly 70 extravagant looks, with about half dedicated to glamour and eveningwear. This raises the question: is it possible to blend camp with glamour? Doesn’t the aesthetic of camp conflict  with true glamour?

Susan Sontag, who explored the concept of camp in her 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp,'" described it as a unique sensibility and aesthetic characterized by extravagance and dramatic exaggeration. She famously defined camp as “a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers.” In the case of the current Dolce & Gabbana collection, it was a young man in a massive faux fur coat – a quintessentially camp item – who opened the show.

There was a significant amount of fur in general, including fur tops that appeared in multiple collections this season, in various contexts. However, creations by Dolce & Gabbana stand out for their exceptional straightforwardness and lack of any playful or sophisticated undertones — here is a fur coat (white, leopard, bear), here is a bare torso, here are cargo pants, here are sneakers. What more do you need?

The next part of the collection featured young men — all with chiseled cheekbones, clearly defined chins, and perfectly shaped bodies — in long classic coats with fur collars and hats reminiscent of the 1940s and 1950s. Yet, the coats themselves were light, soft, and loose, without any rigid structures inside.

The most spectacular part was the third act, dedicated to glamorous evening outings. It was strictly black and white: jackets with sharply cut shoulders, a defined waist, and wide satin lapels, loose trousers with soft folds at the waist, silk scarves, and loose, romantic-looking white silk shirts. But the most extravagant element was the jewellery that accompanied all of this: necklaces and large brooches with rhinestones, worn on the lapels, at the waist, and used as buttons on the jacket and pins on the scarf.

All of this was intended to create a purely glamorous image — and, returning to the question asked at the beginning — Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce have answered it successfully. This straightforward luxury does not contradict the glamour as it is presented by mass culture, perhaps because it is now perceived as part of camp. Dolce & Gabbana – with all their feathers, fur, and sequins – can safely add the title of the kings of glamour to their other title of the kings of camp.

Courtesy: Dolce&Gabbana
Text: Editoriam team