Dolce and Gabbana SS14: all that glitters

A few days before the Dolce & Gabbana show we met with one of their employees. They refused to give anything away about the collection but when we asked, 'Are we still in Sicily?' they answered, 'We are - but in the past tense.' Just how far in the past tense they meant only became clear when the crumbling Greco Roman ruins began to emerge on the catwalk: screen printed on silk dresses, etched into vignettes on full circle skirts, even showing as Ionic columns for the heels of the shoes. It was the Sicily of ancient classical times, and the romance was palpable. Gold coins with archaic Roman emblems were the show's second classical leitmotif - embroidered, crocheted, re-imagined as great glistening paillettes or winking as trompe l'oeuil patterns on chiffon, they provided a gilded edge to the whole collection. And then there were the flowers. Everyone has done flowers this season - it's one of fashion's most enduring themes - but Dolce and Gabbana's were done with a lightness of touch that really made them seem as though they existed in that long lost era before modern pollution, technology and urban expansion dimmed their potency. And that's the Dolce & Gabbana way: rose tinted lenses for everyone. History never looked so sweet.