Dolce&Gabbana unveils the Gen D project

Starting with the idea of an artist residency over a year ago, the Generation Designer (GenD) project, signed by designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana together with curator Federica Sala, has landed at the Milan design week. A worldwide call to attract emerging designers and give them a chance to interpret the brand’s Dna according to their personal sensibility. The goal is to continue the philosophy launched with fashion, namely that of an openness to the future, to young people and their unprecedented readings, but also that to enhance Italian high craftsmanship, its inspirations, its territory. For this first chapter, the maison’s creative directors, who on the occasion of the Milan design week announced a special partnership with Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano-Fai to support Italy’s artistic, cultural, and environmental heritage, selected South Korean ceramist Ahryun Lee, based in Germany, US designer Chris Wolston who lives and works in Medellin, Colombia, Lebanese design duo Sayar&Garibeh currently living in France, Venetian but longtime London-based designer Lucia Massari, and former finance guy Malacou Lefebvre, who abandoned numbers to open a creative carpentry Atelier Malak in Lyon.

The other young talents are Bradley Bowers, active in his New Orleans, or Italian creatives such as Sara Ricciardi and Antonio Aricò, but also Japanese Rio Kobayashi, whose work reflects his dual Austrian and Japanese cultures. The ten designers explored for Dolce&Gabbana Casa some of the main Italian craftsmanship, working with Murano blown glass, Sicilian ceramics, metal carpentry, cabinet-making, terracotta, wickerwork, wrought iron craftsmanship, to metal castings and the now very rare technique of enameling on metal. Not only has Italy represented a hotbed of workmanship and tradition, but also a setting on which they drew for their inspirations. The projects have evocative names and some explicitly mention the country, such as Gioia in Sicily, Limonaia in Milan, The palaver garden or Il giardino delle chiacchiere, Fiosa, Animalier (which reinterprets products that come out of glassworks and become animal-shaped souvenirs), and Luminaria. «The new generations are the future, and it is our duty to put them in a position in which they can learn about valuable and unique realities», the designers told MFF.

Young talents from around the world meet Dolce&Gabbana. What started this choral idea of Gen D?

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana: Gen D was born from the desire to translate into the field of design the same openness to the future that, over the years, we have shown to young fashion talents. It is a very dynamic and stimulating initiative we have been working on for over a year. It is essentially an artist residency project that has allowed ten emerging international designers to explore, with total freedom, some of the main Italian craftmanship and establish a creative exchange with the company’s Dna, with the creative richness of our country and manual know-how.

This initiative seems to lead Dolce&Gabbana Casa toward signature design, with one-of-a-kind pieces and a strong connection to art, as Design Miami/ does. Is that the case?

D.D. and S.G.: The goal behind the project is to connect Italian craftsmanship and culture to young talents throughout the world. The celebration of the excellent craftsmanship present in Italy, combined with the ideas and talents of each artist, has given rise to new aesthetics that can manifest in the works created. Gen D is definitely not a commercial initiative. We worked six-handedly with Federica Sala, the curator of the project, and established a constructive dialogue with all the young people participating so that they could confront the excellence of Italian craftsmanship and enhance it with their own art according to their personal sensibility. We are thrilled with the result and to have the opportunity to tell the beauty of our country also thanks to this project.

What does it mean to look at your brand from a different point of view?

D.D. and S.G.: Putting ourselves on the line. The ten designers we have collaborated with come from all over the world and almost all of them are also people straddling two worlds. Their pliability was the cornerstone of the project and, for us, the most interesting stimulus.

Craftsmanship is a key component in these objects, and many inspiration come from Italy. How does GenD expand the appreciation of Made in Italy?

D.D. and S.G.: The new generations are the future, and it is our duty to put them in a position in which they can learn about valuable and unique realities that they would probably have no other way to explore or appreciate. In addition, looking at the excellence of Made in Italy through the eyes of the younger generations is an incredible added value: their fresh and spontaneous point of view creates valuable opportunities. Above all, it brings tomorrow’s audience closer to classic excellence by projecting them into the future.

Is the project unique or will it be replicated in the future with another set of artists?

D.D. and S.G.: Let’s finish working on the first chapter, then we will figure out how to set up the second one. (all rights reserved)