“We’re in a brave new world now,” said Stefano Gabbana at the unveiling of his brand’s autumn/ winter 22 men’s collection in Milan. “So it felt right to try something new and step out of our comfort zone.” The designer, alongside his partner Domenico Dolce, certainly did that, in a form of a leap towards Gen Z and the kind of wardrobes that the Tiktok generation want today. 

Dolce & Gabbana are known for their sense of showmanship, as well as their soft-focus romanticism with regards to all things Italianate and evocatively traditional, but this time around they were firmly future looking; edgy shapes, sharp, lean-as-whip suits and riotous graffiti emblazoned across voluminous, pillowy puffas and ski suits. Their muse was the LA rapper Machine Gun Kelly, known for his gangly frame, tattoos and high octane Instagram theatrics with his girlfriend Megan Fox; in short, the kind of bad boy that you don’t take home to mamma. But that’s precisely the point. The singer performed on the catwalk in a stone-riddled, slender suit, dutifully fulfilling the rock star requirements expected of him by peeling off his jacket to reveal a tattooed torso and kicking over a mic stand.