Domenico Dolce, half a life in hiding
Before the global brand Dolce & Gabbana there was a couple who kept their relationship quiet for years.
On 13 August 1958, Domenico Mario Assunto Dolce is born in the Sicilian mountain village of Polizzi Generosa, the son of a tailor and a fabric merchant. As a child he already helps out in his father's workshop, and at six he sews his first pair of trousers. After school he is drawn to Milan, where in 1980, in the studio of the designer Giorgio Correggiari, he meets Stefano Gabbana, who is the same age. The professional relationship quickly becomes a private one: the two become a couple, but keep their partnership out of the public eye for years.
In 1985 they found their own fashion house together, Dolce & Gabbana, and a year later they show their first own collection in Milan. Their breakthrough comes by a roundabout route: lacking a budget, they have friends model their first shows, sometimes even in a fast-food restaurant. It works.
In the 1990s Madonna becomes the brand's most important champion, and in 1993 the duo designs 1,500 costumes for her "Girlie Show" tour. Only in 2000 do Dolce and Gabbana publicly confirm that they are a couple, after fifteen years of working and living together without speaking about it in public.
In 2005 they separate privately but continue to run the company together to this day. Dolce is now in a relationship with the Brazilian marketing director Guilherme Siqueira. His public image is not entirely uncontroversial: in 2015 his disparaging remarks about children born through IVF prompted a call for a boycott, from Elton John among others. Even so, as co-founder of one of the most influential fashion houses in the world and as one half of one of the best-known gay couples in fashion, Dolce remains a defining figure of queer visibility in an industry that was long very heteronormative.