Billed as a rejection of algorithm-induced homogeneity and a celebration of intuitive, boundary-defying styling, the Dolce and Gabbana Spring/Summer 2027 collection felt like diving into your very glamorous, very aristocratic, grandmother’s treasure chest of a wardrobe and emerging victorious.
Look fourteen features another leopard-print coat but is as different from look six as it gets. In fact, ‘print’ is rather the wrong word to describe the leopard motif seen here. The coat is entirely covered with tiny tassels, creating a trompe-l'oeil leopard-print effect. Styled with a wide, black belt and layers of chunky jewelry, the look has an ‘80s flair while remaining contemporary and timeless.
Yet a different iteration of a leopard’s spots turns up in look seventy-nine, covering a drop-waist dress and alternating with panels of black lace, another Dolce and Gabbana signature. Styled with flowing streams of long pearl necklaces, the look is clearly inspired by the flapper dresses of the 1920s. The high-low hem of the dress, however, as well as the black ballet flats it’s styled with, pulls the look back from the dangerous cliff edge of caricature. The result is a look that can’t be placed in one single time period or style category; it is the opposite of the flat, hyperbolic style that social media algorithms often pigeonhole their users into.
Another stand-out theme of the collection is unexpected, daring styling: think layering, pattern-clashing, and chunky jewelry. The overall effect is reminiscent of a modern Sicilian aristocrat. With access to troves of her forefathers’ extensive wardrobes, she is able to craft a look that is all her own. The vibe is best encapsulated as ‘casual opulence’. Is that a priceless necklace in look thirty-two, thrown over your mother’s night-time camisole and your grandmother’s deliciously ‘80s red skirt? Styled this way, the extravagant gems look like costume jewelry which, for the purposes of the collection, they probably are. But on the real-life woman Dolce and Gabbana are channeling this season, we know they are not.
In this way, Dolce and Gabbana touch on a very real phenomenon of our increasingly artificial, algorithm-driven age: the propensity of digital technology to perpetuate the class divide between the elites and the underclass. No one can successfully dress like the Dolce and Gabbana Spring/Summer 2027 woman without a mental catalogue of references, accrued naturally across a childhood and adolescence steeped in culture, art, and community. Playing catch-up is futile.
Descending from ancient, monied elites also imbues people with a unique kind of swaggering confidence. So ‘in the club’ is this collection’s muse that she can afford to break all the rules; her great-great-grandmother probably wrote half the playbook. Perhaps one look from the collection that encapsulates this sentiment more than any other is look forty-eight. Objectively, it shouldn’t work. A black, babushka-esque headscarf, a lacy lingerie set, and a broderie anglaise cotton set should not go with, of all things, a black wicker basket, an opulent crucifix, and forest-green welly boots. But it does.
In many ways, then, Dolce and Gabbana’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection isn’t terribly divorced from the worldwide obsession with the ‘old money aesthetic’ that’s been sweeping the internet for the past few years. What makes this collection’s woman more real than the figment of TikTok’s imagination, however, is that Messrs. Dolce and Gabbana have understood what truly qualifies the elite in 2026. At a time when anyone can become a millionaire by posting inanities on social media or making risky bets on dodgy online betting platforms, the only true capital is cultural.
