While many iconic fashion houses carry on the work even after the original founders are dead, Italian fashion icons Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana behind the famed Dolce & Gabbana label have said in a divulging interview that their fashion brand would die with them.
Gabbana, now 55, mentioned, “Once we’re dead, we’re dead. I don’t want a Japanese designer to start designing Dolce & Gabbana.” The duo launched the brand in 1985 and continued working on it together for decades even after going separate ways as a couple in 2004.
He added, “When we split up, we said to ourselves that it was better to divide up everything, because if I took a blow to the head the next day he (Dolce) would have found himself dealing with someone not involved in the industry, like for example my cousin, who could ruin the business.”
Though the pair had refused “every offer to buy the brand,” Dolce admits he is “too busy working” and acknowledges, “You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not free, what do you do? You don’t go to the grave with a coffin stuffed with money.” He also added that he “doesn’t have time to spend his fortune.”
To come to think of it, the pair’s radical decision for Dolce & Gabbana makes sense. No one could have replaced Michael Jackson, the same way no one would have been able to take over Leonardo da Vinci’s work. And perhaps that’s the best possible way for Dolce & Gabbana to bow out.
