Step Inside Dolce & Gabbana’s First-Ever Home Decor Stores

Dolce & Gabbana’s comprehensive and colourful “Casa” collection has found a home of its own.

In April, the storied Italian fashion house announced the opening of not one, but two, stores in Milan exclusively dedicated to their home decor line. After a soft launch last September in Venice, during the Alta Moda collection show, Dolce & Gabbana has made an emphatic entrance into the home interiors segment by opening in the heart of Milan the first two stores dedicated to its home decoration products. The project is ambitious: it includes imminent openings in the USA and France, and features a home accessories, tableware and home linen line designed internally, and a furniture line licensed to the Luxury Living Group (LLG).

Why two, you ask?

Some customers, they figured, are searching for something statement-making, like made-to-order couches and coffee tables. Others may want accents, textiles, or ceramics to accent their spaces. By splitting up the big-ticket items and the smaller ones, they believe they are better able to curate for individual interests and ages.

“We wanted two different stores, each dedicated to specific product categories, but at the same time complementary,” explain Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana in an interview with Vogue. “The boutique in Corso Venezia 7 houses accouterments—twill and duchesse cushions, printed quilts, mouth-blown Murano glassware and Sicilian ceramic plates for an impeccable mise en place, scented candles and lacquered wood accessories. The furnishings—from the large fabric sofas to the lacquered oak tables and the accessorized bar furniture—are available in Via Durini 23.”

The stores are unafraid of making a statement.

The luxury label led by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana has chosen a highly distinctive, original style for a range that is 100% made in Italy, featuring its signature Mediterranean codes, with bright colours galore and lavish decorations.

Each of Casa’s four signature prints—Mediterranean Blue, Zebra, Leo (or, leopard) and Carretto— thus gets its own dedicated area. Here you will subsequently find everything from upholstery to rugs and ceramics.

Furthermore, the displays are framed by simple backgrounds. This is an intentional choice: Dolce and Gabbana decided to keep their stores’ interiors neutral so their distinct designs could take centre stage.

“The volumes and spaces are contemporary and linear; the neutrality of white, black and grey make the creativity of the collection a protagonist,” they explain. “[With the collection] we focused on the Italian fatto a mano: the small stitch, the woven straw, the mosaics, the hand-painted ceramics. But also the lacquering, the basis of almost all the furniture, and the brass processing—incredible skills linked to a know-how.”

What are Dolce and Gabbana eyeing from their own collection?

“We are obsessed with chairs, they symbolize hospitality. A lunch is an opportunity to share without haste,” they say. (The duo also promises Vogue that all of their seating is extremely comfortable.) A dining room table with enough space to seat 20 is another favorite. But really, every piece that comprises Casa, which first launched at their Alta Moda Show in August, means something to them. “We are happy to be able to bring it into the world—the art of living in the home and that conviviality, [which is] absolutely Italian,” they say. “[It] expresses the lifestyle that we love and which best represents us.”

The two collections (home decoration and furniture) feature the same palette and motifs, articulated in the four well-defined themes: leopard, zebra, Mediterranean blue and Sicilian cart. The latter, inspired by the decorations of traditional Sicilian painted carts, with exuberant patterns in vibrant colours like vermilion, citrus yellow and royal blue, is a theme that Dolce & Gabbana had developed in 2016 for a collaboration with high-end Italian home appliances brand Smeg, with which the label created a range of kitchen appliances and utensils, from fridges to toasters and kettles.