Dolce & Gabbana: the Problems of Promoting the Nuclear Family

Dolce & Gabbana, the billion-dollar fashion house founded in 1985, have often drawn upon the image of the "traditional" Italian family in its advertising campaigns, citing that 'family is a fundamental value for the [...] brand'. With such assertions in mind, how does the traditional, nuclear family fit into fashion branding and wider marketing strategies? Whilst this marketing technique should, on paper at least, appear an outdated idea, there's no denying its success as the founders of the brand became billionaires after the fashion house's 2012 advertising campaign focused on the Italian family.

What's so insidious about these campaigns?

Advertising campaigns from Dolce & Gabbana, as far back as 2012, sell consumers an image of a "traditional" Italian family, complete with heterosexual couples comprised of beautiful models in expensive clothes. However, this doesn't match up to the average family, with increasing number of LGBT families, a raising cost of living and our less-than-conventionally-beautiful selves. Then why does it sell? Does it calm the anxiety surrounding the loss of the nuclear family? Is this a monied fantasy? Dolce & Gabbana tell us it's because "family is a fundamental value" for the brand. 

Move forward 3 years, however, and the explicit prejudice of the company's founders is made clear as, in an interview for Panorama magazine, they say that children born via IVF are "synthetic" and born from "wombs for rent", offending both heterosexual couples who cannot conceive naturally and couples across the LGBT* spectrum in one fell swoop. These comments make it clear that Dolce & Gabbana is founded on bigotry, though perhaps not directly controlled by the bigots themselves. They further stated that 'no chemical offsprings and rented uterus' are suitable, or meet the standard of the 'natural' family. Here they are both refusing any "synthetic" forms of conception, but also any that include a financial transaction, suggesting they are against the commodification of family - oh, the irony. They further described how 'life has a natural flow ', and that non-conventional means of contraception would irrevocably tarnish the sanctity of new life. These attitudes are reflected in their advertising campaigns, their own conduct and their gimmicky 'Viva la mamma' platform at Milan Fashion Week earlier this year, in each of which they managed not only to exclude nearly everyone ever but also to somehow wildly contradict themselves. But how do Dolce & Gabbana exclude people from their familial imagery and totally shoot themselves in the foot at the same time?

First and foremost, the families depicted in Dolce & Gabbana's campaigns are exclusively heterosexual, excluding LGBT* individuals and their families. This image from 2012 shows three generations of a "traditional", large Italian family posed as though for a family portrait. The additional branding is minimal, but subtly sells not just clothing but the ideal nuclear family - an all-white, all-beautiful, all-heterosexual and able-bodied family.

Dolce & Gabbana's 2012 campaign image depicts three generations of 'traditional Italian family', via atelierchristine.com

The runway show 'Viva la Mamma' (AW15/16 RTW) also sells consumers the same family image and features almost exclusively white women, with 3 Asian models and 2 black models out of the full 89 models involved. This is significantly below the (already racist) industry standard. Furthermore, not a single model in the show has a visible disability. Dolce & Gabbana's ideal family, then, maintains whiteness and excludes disability, people of colour and any additional form of otherness.

Illustration shows Julia van Os at
Milan Fashion Week

Perhaps most toxically of all, however, this show, and Dolce & Gabbana in general, fetishizes the mother. Here, the female body is being policed and imposed upon (it must be white, it must be able, it must remain beautiful, the woman must be straight) to maintain the traditional family. Viva la mamma celebrates only the mothers who meet the mark. The mark, of course, being decided by rich, white men (their homosexuality, of course, only has a small bearing on their massive privilege). Furthermore, this depiction of motherhood excludes transgender parents (amongst others). 

The bodies of women and of children are being used in this show as props for patriarchal capitalism (as they are everywhere in the media). The children are carried to promote the motherhood theme, not because they are necessary to the marketing of a clothing line and women are utilised to sell clothes according to a theme, not to celebrate motherhood, pregnancy or women. Most troubling in this display is the expectation that children must also meet standards in this display of family also. They must also be able-bodied, preferably white, and conventionally beautiful. If they are not, then they are cast out of the traditional family. 

Illustration depicts Balti at Milan
Fashion Week

This also extends to the fetishizing of the pregnant female body, as model Bianca Balti walked the catwalk whilst pregnant. Whilst this does promote a certain acceptance of pregnancy as beautiful and, as the model's own decision, an absolutely valid choice, the implications of this are troubling. The inclusion of Balti has allowed the fashion house to pat themselves on the back for body diversity, even though Balti is conventionally attractive, has been dressed very femininely, perhaps, even, is denying her own physical comfort for the sake of looks. Furthermore, the company have not branched out into the production of maternity clothes or "plus-size" fashion - rather they've squeezed an attractive, still relatively slender body into a dress from their main collection. 

This further evokes our cultural obsession with the pregnant bodies of celebrities. The media frequently obsesses over the before and after of pregnancy, the returning of the mother to her 'pre-pregnancy body', the slandering of women for gaining weight or for bodily changes throughout pregnancy and after the fact.  Thus, Dolce & Gabbana further promote the act of looking at and criticizing the female body, particularly during pregnancy, and capitalise off of it.

This begs the question: do Dolce & Gabbana care about the sanctity of family at all?

 The answer: absolutely not.

Of course, parenthood, in all its shapes and forms, is sacred, special and beautiful. It is terribly personal if nothing else. Dolce & Gabbana go against these principles, and instead commodify and fetishize parenthood - and fail spectacularly at it by excluding a massive consumer-base (anyone who is not white, straight, able-bodied, conventionally beautiful, wearing designer clothes, wealthy or had children by "traditional" means). As such, Dolce & Gabbana go against their own understanding of the family and go against the fundamental value of family the company champions - if the family is so "sacred" and cannot be commodified, then why have you commodified it?