Tuesday, March 8, 2016

‘GREEKS CAN’T BUY A PAIR OF SHOES’

[The Dolce and Gabbana fashion show at Portofino, Sicily, was designed to look like a setting in Greece.]

[From the New Yorker article, “The Couture Club,” page 78:]

“That week, the real Greece was edging toward economic collapse, and a deadline for establishing its terms of debt repayment to the European Union had been set for Sunday night - the evening of the gold party. The Dolce & Gabbana store in Athens had been closed. To give respect,’ [Domenico] Dolce said. ‘We don't pretend the people there can buy a pair of shoes,' [Stefano] Gabbana said. He added that Alta Moda clients were unlikely to be harmed much by the economic tumult that was dominating the news.
" ‘These people live in another world,’ Gabbana observed. ‘I don't live in that world. He said he was sometimes surprised by the extravagances that Alta Moda clients took for granted. Like when a customer says, “Oh, next time, when you come back, I want to show you my zoo,'" he said, his eyes widening. My face was like marble,’ he went on.I said, “Yes, why not?But - zoo? I live in an apartment, I have three dogs, two cats – you know what I mean. For me, it was very new.’
“Maintaining perspective was important. The Regina d'Italia-with its black upholstered daybeds piled with lynx throws, and its Astrakhan carpets underfoot-was a hundred and sixty-four feet in length. But the Ester III was almost fifty feet longer. Gabbana, who is estimated by Forbes to be one of the thirty richest people in Italy, with a net worth of $1.62 billion, said, ‘And out there'- a gesture toward the bay - is another one bigger, and another one bigger.

“[His partner Domenico] Dolce, who is also estimated by Forbes to be one of the thirty richest people in Italy, with an equivalent fortune [i.e., $1.6 billion], nodded, ‘’If you start comparisons, you never finish.’”


Rebecca Mead, ‘The Couture Club, the World’s Wealthiest Clients Gather by the Mediterranean to Shop,” in the New Yorker, September 21, 2015,
pp. 76-87.