Dolce & Gabbana at the school of excellence

To touch with the finger what makes the essence of a trade, but also its practical reality, is not given to all young people. Domenico Dolce was lucky in the workshop of his father, a tailor in Sicily. Betting on the future, Dolce & Gabbana installed, seven years ago, a sewing school of an unprecedented kind. At the heart of the workshops, apply the 16 students of the Botteghe di Mestiere (translate: "The craft workshops"). At the moment, only young girls. No discrimination: the training is mixed and attracts many candidates, thanks to word of mouth.

Just as it devotes so much attention to the invisible linings of its most extravagant tuxedo jackets, the Italian house has long remained discreet about this initiative. Exceptionally, the doors open. Adjusting lace embroidery with intricate patterns to the millimeter, understanding the elasticities of materials, acquiring technical vocabulary or recognizing the typologies of seams, folds, cuffs, pockets, is a daily occurrence. Eight hours a day. Cut, pattern, seams, embroidery: nothing is overlooked.

“It is important that they learn the“ Dolce & Gabbana method ”not only in cutting, construction and production or assembly, in particular patterns and embroidery - there are many of them! - but also ironing, a particularly important step. Here we teach them the meaning of perfection. It is a school of beauty, ” underlines the charismatic Guisi, their tutor, who has 30 years of experience at home. With responsibility, since the models produced are not abstract exercises but prototypes of the collections, or the making of specimens for the shots.

A gesture can cause the irreparable. Conversely, the beautiful way will cross time. The school should soon open up to male "sartorial" techniques. No wonder when the label returns to the front of the stage with a tailor range dangling subtly between daring and classicism, well highlighted in the spectacular marble setting of the new Parisian boutique of Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, but also the very high-end of the Alta Sartoria collection, true haute couture for men, very noticed during the parade at the Palazzo dei Gesuiti, in Sciacca, last July. Little by little, Dolce & Gabbana is weaving its future.