Today, the devil wore Dolce & Gabbana. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana had the celebrity gets of the season: With movie-perfect timing, Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, dressed in character as Miranda Priestly and Nigel Kipling of Runway magazine, swooped in just as everyone else had taken their seats. Newcomer Simone Ashley, whose role in the sequel has not yet been revealed, perched above them in the second row. As the photographers got their shots, Streep peered around the side of a flashing camera and greeted Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue on whom Priestly is based, who was sitting on the opposite side of the runway. A meta moment if ever there was one.
As for the runway? It was a pajama party—one that picked up where Dolce & Gabbana’s men’s collection, presented in June, left off. At that time, the memo was “a kind of no-fashion fashion…something more individual, more spontaneous.” At the very least, it was a change from the jog bras and exercise leggings that have become so ubiquitous on city streets. And why not? After the men’s show, Dolce reported, they had women customers clamoring for pajamas of their own.
Of course, these were no ordinary striped cotton pajamas. In signature D&G fashion, the designers embroidered them with tiny bouquets of flowers or clusters of crystals and layered them over lacy black bras and briefs, sometimes swapping out the pajama bottoms for black cotton hosiery (a callback to a late-1980s show in which Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington walked). Other times they tossed a tailored blazer on top, or a blouson leather bomber, or a shrunken brocade jacket that could have belonged to your grandmama, “like a memory,” Dolce said.
For evening, the designers swapped out striped cotton for black chiffon tops and bottoms and accessorized them with their famously elegant tuxedo jackets. Some of the looks got skyscraper satin sandals, but just as many were paired with fuzzy slippers. “This new generation,” Dolce commented, “they don’t dress with too much styling. They’re much more relaxed.” If we see Ashley’s DWP2 character turning up at Runway in her pj’s, we’ll know where she got the idea.
