The prominent Sicilian photographer, Ferdinando Scianna, noted for his photo-journalism is now making a name in fashion photography working with Italy's most Mediterranean designers: Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. A perfect brotherhood: the atmosphere of a Palermo dungeon and fashions inspired by neo-realism have left their mark on the last ten years, sounding a contralto to the tones of a more conservative and traditional aesthetic.

It's interesting to observe how Dolce&Gabbana have highlighted the details of everyday Sicilian life, in its reality and iconic representation. For example, rosary beads have become incorporated into the D&G trend as necklaces. They have managed to exhalt and reinterpret a culture which has had nothing to do with fashion in the past.
They have upset the sense of things, so to speak, bringing undergarments out from under. The bra has become a formidable and highly-visible garment. Their straw hand-bags recall traditional Sicilian carts. They remain true to their source of inspiration, and their brown pinstripe suits have altered international tastes by making high-style from something long relegated to the fashion periphery. There is a fierce pride in being Italian exhibited in their works, reflected also in their Sicilian ceramic home-decor accessories. By totally understanding the concept of machismo so central to Sicilian culture and rhetoric, they have stripped bare the mainstays of this culture and redraped them in new versions, receiving great international approval.
It's fascinating to watch the globalization of Sicilian culture as it transported and diffused by MTV videos featuring the many musical artists who wear D&G fashions.

However, is anybody surprised if in D&G's next step, everything blends together again? The TV-ad for their perfume, directed by Oscar-winner Tornatore, is once again all about cactus, glaring lights, fleshy and impassioned women, furtive glances and impure thoughts all interacting with a strange alchemy, insular yet universal and leaving a trace through Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale, The Leopard, Roberto Rossellini and De Sica, Visconti, Anna Magnani...A complex yet single-note fashion, superficial by definition -how could fashion be otherwise- but subtly dramatic, and evocative of dense atmospheres.