Dolce and Gabbana Podcast Highlights the Color Black

What do you think of when you think of the color black? If you say funerals, you're not alone. But if you say elegance or power or fashion, you're also in good company. The color black has had as many meanings historically as there are shades of it. In the new Dolce & Gabbana podcast, Molto Italiano, Isabella Rosselini explores the signs and features that Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana use to make their label so iconic. Episode 2 is simply titled "Black."

A History of the Color Black

The episode opens with a quote from famed Sicilian photographer Ferdinando Scianna. The south of Italy is a dialogue between light and sorrow. The island of Sicily is bright and filled with fruit and flowers. It's the source of inspiration for both Domenico and Stefano and yet the sign from this muse is the color black. Black has many shades and each shade can represent a different attitude or emotion. Black can be mournful or cheerful, depressing or erotic, elegant, seductive, or aggressive. Dolce & Gabbana designs showcase the important truth that black always has a purpose. Black doesn't represent empty space; rather, black is used to enrich other colors. This work is best accomplished by paying as much attention to black as to other colors rather than looking at it as wasted space.

Assigning Black a Global Standard

Dolce & Gabbana is inspired by its origins. Both founders of the fashion house claim Sicily as the place of their birth; and so, in this place, the love of black was bred. While on the island black is the color of mourning, Domenico and Stefano decided to reinterpret and transform the color and give it new life. In New York, it had become fashionable for models, designers, and others in the fashion industry to wear black so as not to intrude on a photographer's light. Dolce & Gabbana designed such beautiful pieces in black that it quickly became not only a trend but a global standard to wear black to all sorts of occasions.

Black as Function, Fashion, and Favor

Carmella Spinelli of the Savannah College of Art and Design explains that black has a performative quality which allows the wearer to transform themselves in all sorts of ways. Wearing a rich, black, well-designed Dolce & Gabbana dress can convey power and status while a workman's worn black shirt can betray something more mundane. Many artists, including Domenico and Stefano choose to wear black when they're working. Much like a photographer prefers to have black surrounding their subject in an effort to ward off intrusive light, the designers wear black to allow the art they're creating to shine. Black is actually many shades together rather than the absence of color. For this reason, black is good for traveling because it goes with everything. Black can be elegant or simple, but it is always clean and flattering.

The Molto Italiano podcast celebrates the signs that makes Dolce & Gabbana an icon of Italian craftsmanship. Keep up with each episode of their new show from Chora Media to learn about the inspiration behind each Dolce & Gabbana design.