MILAN — Dolce & Gabbana’s new ads shot by Steven Meisel are an artsy take on male camaraderie and female complicity.
Especially with the men’s images, the designers took a new route by reinterpreting the lighting, colors and innuendo of Caravaggio’s paintings.
“This is a big change for us,” Stefano Gabbana told WWD. “Caravaggio is one of my favorite painters. I discussed his work at my high school exams and I recently went to an exhibition here in Milan. His is a static physicality based on a voyeuristic edge, rather than pumped-up muscles.”
An Italian Baroque painter, Caravaggio was best known for his chiaroscuro, or light-dark effects and naturalistic paintings.
The idea behind the photos is that of a group of sculptured men who hang out at the gym, in swimming trunks or dressed up for a special occasion in a friendly atmosphere. “It’s about individuality, but with a team spirit, like the one you can find in a gym’s changing room,” Gabbana said.
Caravaggio works that the duo and Meisel transported from the late Renaissance into contemporary fashion include “The Martyrdom of St. Matthew,” “The Conversion of St. Paul,” and “Cupid and the Cardsharps.”
Both campaigns were shot at New York’s Pier 59 studios. The men’s images will break in GQ on Christmas day, and the women’s appeared in the January issues of international books.
As for the women’s images, the designers ushered their sexy and glammed-out farm girls from their blockbuster runway show into a hayloft, filled with chickens and goats. Most of the frames are filled with a gaggle of rumpled-haired models, sprawled out on haystacks, rolled over in wheelbarrows or tugging at a rope, all decked out in frills, flounces, lace, gingham and corsets.
“Yet again, it’s about about female connivance like the ones between girls resting after a hard day’s work day or when during World War II, they teamed up to take on the hard jobs because the men were at war,” said Gabbana. “They know they are strong and powerful. That’s the message.”