Restraint has never been a strong suit of Domenico Dolce or Stefano Gabbana thus its reassuring that even as the rest of the world focuses on the downsides of bailing out America's financial industry that excess is still on the mind of these Italian eccentrics. Either that or its profoundly disappointing that the duo has found no way to rework their brand to leaner times and wary consumers.
Ballgowns at once weighed down with flowers and buoyed up by with crinolines of metal mesh are certainly not the sort of reasonable garment one expects from a ready to wear collection, least of all in a time of belt tightening. And yet there they were in all their baroque splendor. Reaching for couture in an age where the future is positively opaque dazzles and yet we wonder why? But then surely we could wonder that about the entire parade of fashion weeks we are following and will follow again in six months time. Plus ça change?
Thankfully for buyers plenty of well merchandized pieces were mixed into the heady vision of ridiculous rococo from silk pajam tops to brocade sirts (almost appropriate for the office even) and some very attractive wedges. The commercial element ever lingers. A fact that makes us heave a sigh of relief.
Cowboy boots entered the hipster pantheon as the first ironic product tie in of the Williamsburg lifestyle. Hank Williams and Willie Nelson became totems of the newly sincere grasping Americana that flooded urban enclaves. Soon these emblems gave way to new signs of the American dream, preppy replacing rustic in the hierarchy of cool just as surely as Vampire Weekend wears topsiders. But the cowboy rides again. Its not that we have seen girls sporting boots this summer, we could never figure it out the first time, as stinky feet don't evoke the eroticism necessary to full channel "youth" which is a prerequisite for hipsterdom. Rather, it was a most unlikely product that shifted our perspective.
The Dolce & Gabbana Runway Snakeskin Lace-Up Bootiefeatured in our Island Life photo editorial might seem a strange evocation of the soul of cowboy. But what are these booties if not the cowboy boot reinvented?
And lest you are tempted to call us crazy, community member Style...A Work In Progress has cowboys on the brain as well. She tickles us with proper cowboy aphorisms like "real cowboys never run, they just ride away." In which case, maybe the cowboy is riding back again. With booties like the Dolce and Gabana snakeskins you can't run away, you can really only ride a taxicab into the sunset. And if you prefer a more traditional boot we even have a substitute. But we think faded dungarees, a white boyfriend shirt and booties are just the way to bring the cowboy back, ironically and very expensively.
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