SPRING 2013 MENSWEAR: Dolce & Gabbana

I really love this collection!
It got me all excited because most importantly, the clothes answer the brief of what one wants to wear when the weather gets sizzling hot, as it has right now. There are enough baroque prints and colours to make it look contemporary (Versace by way of Givenchy, yes?), the cut and fits look comfortable and the shorts and cropped pants look flattering and so easy to wear. What more can you ask for?

Nostalgia and an escape to a more innocent time is what this collection seems to be about. Clicking through this collection felt like watching Cinema Paradiso, or a romantic melange of all those old Italian movies and hark back to Domenico Dolce's and Stefano Gabbana Sicilian roots. Their latest collection is an entire Dolce and Gabbana village, with urchins, salemen, sailor, piano-tuner, the motley cast, mostly non-models, actually drawn from Sicilian towns and villages, modelling clothes that could have come striding out of an especially precious vintage store. It said authentic and felt emotional, which is a rare and beautiful thing in fashion right now. 
Although Dolce & Gabbana seems to have carved out a business making clothes mined from looking back at fashions past, the appeal of this season has a lot to do with a certain rustic simplicity and innocence, obvious if you compare this collection with the gilded and elaborate opulence of the last (Fall 2012). The humility and charm of the really high-waisted pleated shorts, the faded colours and antique prints, the oversized striped cotton shirts and linen with raw hems, the awning-stripes and pyjama tops, the sailor tees, all spell summer, sun and sea. The escape is from the formality of the city and the cares of the adult (many of the models were in fact children). The tightly belted, hand-me-down look, and three-piece suits do not say ‘slick banker’ but rather have that well-worn look of something worn by a country doctor.