Cooper's Lite

All backstage media were kicked out just as Trelise Cooper's show was due to start yesterday. So, given that our runway photo skills tend to be hit and miss, the best shots we managed to take were the first looks from Cooper's Cooper diffusion range which opened. Cute show, whose opening number - Jace Everett's True Blood theme toon 'Bad Things'- had everyone tapping their toes. The military jackets, denim blousons, nubby wool high-waisted trousers, prairie shirts embellished with smocking or bullion fringing and microshorts galore, in American flag-printed denim and crochet, seemed tailor-made for True Blood's feisty fairy Sookie Stackhouse, who is played by Canadian-born Kiwi Anna Paquin, even if the pretty, drop-waisted teadresses with fruit prints were probably a little too virginal for same. Frockwriter couldn't help including two shots from Cooper's palate cleanser in between the Cooper and Trelise Cooper shows: an army of models in black blazers and corsets/knickers. Minus the word "boardroom" printed across the models' derrières, it was a knockoff of Dolce e Gabbana's finale for the Fall/Winter 2010/2011 show in Milan in February 2010. Here is a photo gallery, best viewed on the blog. The final Style.com shot is from the original Dolce e Gabbana show.  

Fur realz - Fall/Winter 2011/2012

The European Fall/Winter 2011/2012 menswear season is off and running in Milan. After a day of shows, what are the early trends? Military detailing, velvet, drop-crotch trousers and a surprising amount of colour for a winter season. Of note, Burberry's tangerine and cyclamen pink pea coats, duffle and puffa jackets and Jil Sander's skinny knits, parkas and colour-blocked suiting in an eye-popping palette, which creative director Raf Simons looks to have carried over from his womens' spring 2011 show. Not to mention fur. This time last year we noted a preponderance of shaggy glam rock mens' coats in various fabrications. And although this season, Dolce e Gabbana used faux fur and Roberto Cavalli's patchwork fur coat had almost a vintage vibe, the luxury ante was definitely upped by Burberry, which showed a number of rabbit, lambskin and patchwork Finnish mink jackets, including one spectacular two-tone mink for a cool US$27,000. 

Dolce & Gabbana's Spiga2 in the Qantas Travel Insider

 

I have just started writing for Qantas Travel Insider, the cool little travel advice blog operated by the Australian airline, by way of ACP Magazines (and at 300-350,000 page impressions/month, it's not so little). I’m going to be specialising in fashion retail, so I guess that kind of makes me the Travel Insider's fashion insider. First up, a new startup in a city whose cobblestone-paved streets are well-trodden by fashionistas – and this fashionista in particular, while covering the biannual ready-to-wear show season. Yes, Milano. Click (here) to read my QTI review of Dolce & Gabbana’s new fashion incubator project Spiga2 which showcases the work of over 20 designers, including Australians Gail Reid and Martin Grant. 

Gail Sorronda gets the Dolce e Gabbana treatment

Who needs Roberto Cavalli when you’re being mentored by Dolce e Gabbana? Overnight, Brisbane native Gail Reid popped up in this video interview on Dolce e Gabbana’s Swide website. Reid's five year-old Gail Sorronda label is one of 21 labels that were hand-picked by the Italian luxury titans for their brand new fashion incubator retail concept in Milan, Spiga2. “I love Gail Sorronda. It’s my taste” Stefano Gabbana told The Wall Street Journal last month. It has been a very big year for Reid. In March, she told frockwriter that she was being considered for a freelance consulting gig at Roberto Cavalli’s studio. By July, that had yet to transpire, but that month Reid was one of seven finalists in the 2010 edition of Who Is On Next, an emerging talent showcase in Italy that is jointly organised by Alta Roma and Vogue Italia. Great to see major fashion names supporting newbies although that said, it’s a little odd to see included in the Spiga2 lineup Paris-based Australian expat Martin Grant, who has been showing on schedule in Paris for a number of years. Grant established his label in Melbourne in 1982, when he was just 15.

Those who make passes at girls who wear glasses: the great Danny Roberts ripoff

danny roberts/wwd (top) dolce e gabbana/swide

Frockwriter has written about up-and-coming LA fashion illustrator Danny Roberts on several occasions. In August, I also profiled him for WWD, with the online version accompanied by a gallery of 21 images. Roberts' distinctive, expressionistic model caricatures are rapidly gaining currency across the net, via his Igor + Andre blog and his various fashion collabs. To wit, Roberts' 'Girls in Glasses' T-shirt, adapted from his mixed media painting based on Chanel's Spring 2007 collection and launched in April through London-based e-tailer Borders & Frontiers, seems to be a runaway hit. Several hundred units have been sold, with the shirt popping up in magazines, on punters on the Lookbook.nu auto street style site and on several high profile bloggers. Not counting a suite of knockoffs.

Given the song and dance that Italian luxury brand Dolce e Gabbana made about bloggers in Milan in September, seating several high-profilers front and centre at its main line show, you might assume that Dolce e Gabbana would be commissioning art directly from any bloggers whose work the company admires.

Although Roberts has yet to do any work for Dolce e Gabbana, there are nevertheless some remarkable similarities between this image, above, that was recently done by an in-house artist to illustrate sunglasses on Dolce e Gabbana's Swide website and Roberts' 'Girls in Glasses' illustration.

Meanwhile, here is the original Girls in Glasses T-shirt, below, as worn by (top to bottom) Fashion Toast's Rumi Neely, Les Mads' Jessie Weiss and Le Blog de Betty's Betty Autier.









And here are a few knockoffs:








Images:
1, 2: screen grabs yesstyle.com
3: ebay
4,5,6: screen grabs supplied by Danny Roberts

Beau geste: Did the dog eat Versace's social media homework?

doug ordway for versace

Overnight Versace showed its SS10 menswear show in Milan. Inspired by the French Foreign Legion, the hallmark looks of the largely desert-toned collection were the safari suit, a series of loose djellabah shirts, many of them dip-dyed, and the now de rigueur manbag. In Versace’s case, this included both the megatote and the duffle bag, right down to small, square leather purses, worn belted at the hip. Below is a video of the collection from, once again, the good folk over at LA Times blogs. And just as well that someone had their eye on the social media ball at Versace, because in spite of the suggestion that Versace was “fully embracing the digital era”, including the promise of "doggie cam" - that's right, a camera-enabled pooch - Versace’s so-called exclusive live-streamed backstage access turned out to be rather confusing.

Is there anything at all on the Versace website? No.

Instead, there is a series of uncaptioned photos on the Twitter feed of Doug Ordway.

Who is that exactly? Ordway is a photographer who says he does a lot of work for Versace.

A few images of the hair & makeup stage were posted on Twitter prior to the show. The bulk of the images were however posted long after the show had wrapped - with no captions whatsoever.

Ordway also shot three maximum 30 second backstage videos backstage which also went up after the event (see below).

Another site called Ftape, which calls itself the "Ultimate Online Fashion Resource" - and whose connection to Versace is unclear – appeared charged with the role of promoting Ordway's coverage via its website and Twitter.

And at least Ftape has done a good job of aggregating all of Ordway's photos and video together in the one spot. But you had to really know what you were looking for to find it.

Perhaps the doggie-cam - and also touted model-cam - footage is to be used at some later date.

Memo to Versace: YouTube is not live-streaming video. Nor is uploading a gazillion photographs hours after the event.

It’s great that more and more fashion companies are interested in getting into social media and providing their audiences with content.

But try taking a leaf out of Dolce e Gabbana’s book.

Dolce e Gabbana manages to aggregate all its content under the Dolce e Gabbana umbrella.

The company does have a spinoff, magazine-style website - Swide - which pumps out a lot of exclusive content. Granted, the site has a rather baffling name - which, judging by its low Twitter follow count may confuse people. But at least Dolce e Gabbana is serious about social media and has dedicated resources to it.

And furthermore, of course, Dolce e Gabbana actually live-streams its runway shows to the net as they happen.

The man clutch at Dolce e Gabbana

Yes the Spring/Summer 2010 menswear shows are off in Milan and thanks to a couple of social media-savvy brands that showed on day one – Dolce e Gabbana and Burberry – here is a closer look (just try a Google News search on Burberry, Dolce e Gabbana, Missoni, Jil Sander or any other brand which showed yesterday and see how much mainstream media coverage comes up right now - nada). Both Dolce e Gabbana and Burberry personally invited our buddy Bryanboy to see their shows and both companies very quickly provided images. Dolce e Gabbana deserves special mention for setting the social media agenda in the luxury world, by being the first major brand to live stream all its shows. Kollektor and frockwriter were among many to watch the company's show last night, the highlights of which – as we noted live – included compact clutch purses being carried by almost every model (who included Madonna squeeze Jesus Luz), glitzy jacquard smoking jackets over cropped trousers, bejewelled tuxedos, singlets with Marlon Brando graphics and a platoon of buffed muscle boys in heavily-distressed jeans (which, according to D&G's online alter-ego Swide, are lined in pyjama silk). More images after the jump. For complete coverage, from runway to backstage, head to Dolce e Gabbana’s website.










all images: Dolce e Gabbana

Dolce e Gabbana FW0910 live

Mesdames Butterfly

Jacobean corsets, brocade capelets, heavily frogged military jackets, poet shirts and micro puffball skirts... D&G's FW0910 collection was inspired by all things Italian opera, with a heavy emphasis on La Traviata. As the D&G website told us before the show streamed live to the net, the latter was the original 'Pretty Woman' - hence, frockwriter assumes, the collection's dizzying, bejewelled streetwalker platforms and the chastity belt motif on the bags and belts. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana continue to pioneer the social media frontier of fashion marketing by streaming their shows live to the net. The nanosecond the show wrapped, moreover, they swiftly uploaded some backstage looks to their Facebook page to give their fans a closer look. Here is a selection of images.








all images: dolce e gabbana

D&G live

dolce e gabbana FW0809 via hautfashion.com

OK so Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady have tied the knot, with not only Bündchen wearing Dolce e Gabbana but apparently also her three dogs. Now it's time for the main event - or at least its diffusion version. Yep, as with September's SS09 show, those social media gurus Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana are about to broadcast once again live to the net, this time with their D&G line. Watch it here at 2.00pm Milan time today (midnight AEST). This time, we're going to add on a little extra something. Instead of furiously texting and emailing throughout with mates such as Matt 'Imelda' Jordan - the "despotic queen of shoes" - we're going to try to blog the show live. We'll try to post via Twitter feeds so as to keep the one Milan Fashion Week (#MFW) convo in the one place for those who are following it. And we'll add in the Twitter feeds of some fashion peeps who are on the spot, for some on-the-ground perspective. So feel free to dive in and join the conversation. On with the show!

Live and luxe: Dolce e Gabbana

dolce e gabbana SS09

I don't know how many of you watched the show video live, but I imagine Dolce e Gabbana's site traffic exploded. That's one way of taking fashion to the masses.

Don't have any show notes in front of me, or the benefit of any other shots beyond my own blurry screen grabs, but the collection looked to be an opulent amalgam of richly embellished fabrics and embroideries offset by extravagant costume jewellery and behemoth platform wedges.

The rich fabrics were translated into voluminous silhouettes. There were pannier skirts and cocktail jackets and blouses featuring oversized puffed sleeves - a definite period reference there, which bore somewhat of a resemblance to the traditional butterfly sleeves of the national dress of the Philippines.

A second theme of pyjama chic featured loose silk wide-legged trousers, peignoir-style robe jackets and microshorts. [UPDATE 26/09 @ 8.30am AEST: According to WWD, which obviously did see the show notes, the collection was titled 'Pyjama Baroque'].

The finale, usually done in collaboration with venerated Parisian embroiderer François Lesage, showcased a spectacular series of off-white cocktail dresses and ballgowns that were heavily encrusted with silk flowers.

If there's a Recession on, evidently D&G didn't get the memo.










Click here to see the complete collection on wwd.com.

Dolce e Gabbana live

For anyone who's interested in watching the Dolce e Gabbana show as it happens in Milan - which as I type, is now 30 minutes past the due start time - here's the live streaming link. Any minute now.

Oh bondage, up yours! From H&M to S&M on the winter runways

Did I, um, say conservative? I believe I did last week, right around the time of Gucci's bon chic bon genre collection - following as it did hot on the heels of Marc Jacobs' nattily-dressed laydees in New York. By Friday afternoon however, a far darker theme had reared its head and before we get to the Paris shows, I thought it was worth a few words.

Now it's not like 'tough chic' or 'pretty punk' is brand new.

The corset and bustier trend has been around for seasons and there was a hard edge to the punk-studded Giles Deacon and D&G shows of spring/summer 2007.

Even Burberry Prorsum showed a silver stud-encrusted silk cocktail series for summer - one dress from which series recently made the front cover of both British Tatler and Harpers Bazaar in the same month.

Flying out of Malpensa airport on Saturday, it was hard to miss D&G's new spring ad campaign with its punked-up disco slappers in chainmail microdresses and spiked stilettos. Although sexually-charged, it was however a far cry from current Dolce e Gabbana signature line ads - which have attracted much flack. Last week the company announced it would withdraw one image from the Spanish market after women's groups complained that it glorified violence against women. It featured a woman being pinned to the ground by one man, while other men look on. Last month, the winter campaign of their mens line, which featured men brandishing knives and guns, was banned in Britain.

Which brings us to the Dolce e Gabbana FW0708 show on Thursday afternoon: a suite of masked, whip-toting, silver chastity belt-wearing dominatrixes in gravity-defying silver stiletto pumps. Oh and some clothes, such as some sharp tuxedo pantsuits, leopard print PVC bubble skirts, black silicone corset dresses, studded silver bustier and shell dresses and some very pretty crystal- and silk flower-embellished, silk tulle evening dresses that seemed at counterpoint to the otherwise 'hardcore' theme.

Later that evening the designers presented an exhibition called "Secret Ceremony": a series of erotic images of themselves in various stages of undress taken by Steven Klein - supposedly the shots considered too risque for US glossy W, which originally commissioned the series.

On Friday afternoon, DSquared gave an angsty presentation that had many buzzing well into the evening.

Staged against a dungeon-like backdrop featuring a giant caged dome hung with moaning 'inmates' - but in fact a replica of the mis en scene of their recent menswear show - models stormed out in black leather breastplates, black skin-tight leather jeans, black 'urban' combat jackets/gilets over black microshorts, and all teamed with absurdly-high pink platform tart shoes, leather horse blinkers - with one model brandishing a black baseball bat.

At Iceberg, there were black, zippered, strappy bondage dresses and black bomber jackets with bondage straps.

That morning, even the normally refined Missoni had a touch of the dominatrix about it via some bizarre, multi-strap corset belts and a series of evening dresses that featured embellished, self-titled "bondage scarves".

And while Gianfranco Ferre showed some very architectonic kimono coats and metallic shift dresses, my money was on his raunchy, skinny, black leather combats with zippered pockets.

But is it bondage, punk, S&M, haute grunge urban or simply Lara Croft?

It's dark, that's for sure. He didn't tie his models up however with his slick, all-black collection shown on day two of the season in New York, Sydney's own Josh Goot seems to be on the money once again.

By convenient coincidence, at my first Paris show this afternoon - Rick Owens - I bumped into the director of the Museum at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, fashion historian and curator Valerie Steele. Steele might not have seen the shows first-hand in Milan but she is the author of the 1995 book Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power. I figured she would have an interesting take on things.

Here's what she said:

What do you think about this emerging bondage/S&M theme at the Milan shows?
Valerie Steele: It seems to me that many S&M things in fashion just act as a kind of shortcut or signal for 'This is ultra-sexy fashion'. It's not even perverse anymore. It's very visual and theatrical and conveys easily to the public that it's about sex. Most things like body exposure don't - that sort of ho-hum, underwear-as-outerwear doesn't but if you do really flagrant S&M references then Jo Average will go 'Oh yes right, that means it's sexy and hot'. I remember when, after Versace had done all those things back in the early 90s that were sexy and sort of fetish-y [a case in point, Liz Hurley's famous safety pin dress], I talked to real fetishists and I said, 'So, what did you think of Versace?' and they said, 'We hate it - because now you can't tell if someone's really into it or if they're just making a fashion statement'. And I think at this point it has spread so rapidly into just being vernacular for 'This means sexy'.

The wowsers are saying its misogynistic. But terms such as 'dominatrix' don't really gel with the idea of submission, surely?
That was always the argument, about Versace and everyone else: was it chic or was it cruel? Was it putting the woman in a dominatrix position of power or making her act out a male fantasy of being the sexy woman of power?

Dolce and Gabbana have just had to pull one ad campaign in Spain after complaints.
The thing is of course, most dominatrixes are paid to do that for a male sexual fantasy...

A straight male sexual fantasy. It seems to be predominantly gay male designers who are coming up with these S&M references.
Yes but you know, the S&M is so theatrical it's not really about one gender versus another gender. It's just about actors playing on positions of power versus positions of submission. But it's all play acting anyway.

Do you think perhaps Dita Von Teese and the mainstreaming of burlesque that has been happening recently may have anything to do with it?
Oh I think it's part of the same phenomenon, sure. Theatrical sex is perfect for fashion because fashion is a kind of visual shorthand and you're not really going to be showing people engaging in sexual acts. You take your clothes off for that, usually. But with these kinds of things, you can be a kind of visual sartorial semaphor that says, 'This is about sex, this is about sex'. It's role-playing.

Why at this particular moment?
I think it's just a cycle. I think it comes back every couple of years. Like all of that corsetry. Every couple of years.


In fact, when you looked back, you realised that the whole bondage theme had really kicked off as far back as Monday's Burberry Prorsum collection.

Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey [pictured above with models Lily Donaldson, Freja Beha Erichsen and Sasha Pivovarova backstage] insisted at the time that it was all about armour and 'protection'.

Inspired by Burberry's 150 year-old jousting knight logo, Bailey reinvented the iconic Burberry trench into a series of artfully-constructed coats fashioned from everything from nappa leather to shaved mink, quilted python and tapestry jacquards.

Boasting studs, exposed brass zippers, armour-like shoulder guards - and layered over delicate, ruched silk slip dresses and skirts - the entire collection had a very medieval feel. The accessories were particularly noteworthy. Long leather gloves, which have become a recurring motif throughout this season [in part possibly to do with all the short sleeves on the coats and dresses] with quilted, gauntlet-like cuffs; dominatrix-style, shiny, black over-the-knee boots; foot-wide buckled black leather corset belts and handbags with punk hardware.

One bag in particular seems a quantum leap from Burberry's genteel English heritage: a large tote that is completely covered in silver studs and festooned with a series of buckled black leather bondage straps.

After the show I spoke with Bailey and had meant to post the interview immediately. Due to an internet issue in my hotel that night however, it became stuck on my backburner all week. We started off talking about bondage and then segued into a few other subjects. Here's the Q&A in full - I figured some may be interested in what else Bailey has to say.

We saw some 'tough chic' coming through in your summer collection with the silver-studded eveningwear, now you're moving even more hardcore. What do you think that says about fashion at the moment?
Christopher Bailey: In terms of fashion, I don't know. Certainly in terms of Burberry, we've just celebrated our 150th anniversary and I just wanted to move her forward.

By taking her back to the Dark Ages?
By making her a little tougher and by this idea of protection and kind of that security and kind of being almost camouflaged and looked after. And I think that was really the idea of this. And I think generally in fashion, to answer your question, there is a feeling of looking at modernity in a different way. And I think that harder edge is something that...

So like, protection on the outside?
Yeah I think we do. And I think we should never lose the romance.

Well Joan of Arc was romantic.
Absolutely and I think that there can be sex and some romance even with protection. And I think that's what I was exploring with this collection.

Could you just run through some of the fabrics?
A lot of leather, in every kind of form. I did it quilted and ruched and stitched and patterned, bonded... I did a lot of fur which was shaved, it was mink. And I did a lot of silk nylon outerwear. I did a lot of silk in both this and almost a lingerie satin.

What was that chain mail material - the trench at the end?
Basically they were all hand-stitched metal grommets that we just kind of made almost like armour. We did it also on the sleeves of the cashmere sweater.

Obviously you're a gun for hire there, and a very successful gun for hire, but does anyone ever freak when you say, 'Hey, this is my vision for Burberry for next season: S&M'?
No, you know, it doesn't really work like that. I work very very closely with Angela [Ahrendts], our ceo, and I have a vision for the aesthetics of the company. Angela has an amazing business point of view and vision and we work together. It's a collaborative thing. Angela would never say, 'Oh you should not do this, you should not do that'. Design isn't like that.

She had no problem when you told her you wanted to put bondage straps on one of the bags?
We weren't really looking at them as bondage straps, we were looking at them...

That's what they look like.
Everybody translates it in the way that they see it.

Are you going to actually produce those fabulous puss-in-boots boots and the long gloves, or were they just a styling thing?
Absolutely, yeah.

Just on the fashion brain drain from London. Why is it that all the great British designers ultimately have to leave?
I don't think they leave. Again, I see fashion in a different way. I don't see it that it has to be tied down to one city. I have my whole design creative team in London. We have our head offices in London, we do a lot of our manufacturing in the UK. And I think we have the most incredible design schools in the UK. But fashion is global. We have a lot of young talent, a lot of young design talent in the UK. And because it's a global design business I think we need everybody to have a global experience. I don't believe in this insular thing of just because you're trained in London, you have to stay in London.

Obviously some designers are saying no to big design jobs within large companies. What are you doing with Burberry that you couldn't do with your own label?
I really don't have any interest right now in creating my own label. I love to be saturated within the brand of Burberry. For me it's very, very inspiring. It's one of the great British luxury brands within the world. So for me it's an honour to work within a company like that. I don't know, I guess I'm not turned on by the idea of having my name out there. I'm the spokesperson for Burberry and I have the design vision and the aesthetic vision. And I'm certainly an integral part to this huge company. But it's not about me, it's not about Christopher Bailey. It's about Burberry and it's about me retranslating Burberry. And I always kind of talk about, you know, we've been around for 150 years and I'm this tiny little dot in that 150 years.

That reminds me of what Francisco Costa said after the Calvin Klein show in New York, when I asked why he doesn't do more there. He replied, 'I'm not a power freak'. Some say that when you worked at Gucci you used to design all the womens clothes for Tom Ford. Did you?
Did I design all the clothes? No I didn't design all the clothes. I designed a lot of them, of course.

Last week Julien Macdonald told the anti-fur lobby to piss off.
Oh did he? OK, that was very diplomatic.

I thought it was something of a progression from his previous 'no comment' on the subject. Do you have any sentiments to express to the anti-fur lobby?
You know again, for me, it's always about balance. I don't think it's about [being] radical and dictatorship. Everybody has a point of view. I don't believe in aggressive behaviour and that I really deplore. And really do not agree that that kind of a situation should happen within any kind of presentation or within any retail store.

Designers can show fur, but it doesn't it really come down to the fact that consumers want to buy fur?
The consumer will tell us when they believe that they shouldn't. And for me, fur is a part of our history, it's a part of Burberry's culture. And again, I don't react to radical statements and aggression.

Telling them to piss off was fairly radical though.
Oh well you know, Julien is Julien, so good for him.

Original post and comments.

Elvis has left the runway: An audience with Kylie and D&G

Backstage after Thursday's scintillating Dolce e Gabbana show. And I do mean scintillating, with a finale of one-armed, Lesage-sequinned catsuits and jumpsuits. I should note that the most amusing aspect of this finale was not the outfits themselves, which seemed more than a little Elvis-meets-Coogi but rather, the performances of the models who had all apparently been briefed to wave one arm up and down in a kind of interpretative dance movement - designed, presumably, to best highlight the unisleeves. Twyla Tharp, it wasn't.

After the show wrapped, a posse of journalists was ushered downstairs at the Metropol Theatre. That's the space that has been purchased by designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana as a show venue. Several other big Italian names such as Prada, Armani and latterly Versace, have purchased similar. According to the Dolce e Gabbana publicist the Metropol was built in the 1940s and Maria Callas used to rehearse there.

We were taken into a black anteroom, replete with black Louis XIV-style chairs, a behemoth black and white Murano glass chandelier that took up most of the space between the central table and the ceiling, mirrored cabinetry and two large vases of perfect cream roses.

Behind the black velvet curtains was another blackened room where Kylie, Dolce and Gabbana were sitting. I went in first to speak to the trio alone briefly, but after a few minutes - without a sound - some other journalists crept in behind me. Apologies for the confusion, but this is an amalgam of questions, just over half of them mine:

[to Kylie] SO THIS IS YOUR FIRST FASHION SHOW FOR QUITE SOME TIME... HOW DOES IT FEEL BEING BACK IN THE BOSOM OF THE FASHION INDUSTRY?
[Laughs] Mmmmmm, good. Yeah it's good, it's exciting. I love a show where I don't have any pressure. We were waiting here before the show and I was thinking, 'What is happening with the boys right now?' Final minute fussing and all of that. But Dolce e Gabbana never fail to deliver.

[to Dolce and Gabbana] WAS THERE A BIT OF KYLIE MINOGUE IN THAT SHOW? THERE WAS A BIT OF KYLIE, I THOUGHT, AND IN FACT A BIT OF ELVIS. I THOUGHT THERE WAS MORE THAN A BIT OF ELVIS PRESLEY.
Dolce: [Alarmed] No there is more Kylie, not Elvis.

I'M SORRY, YOU HAVE TO ADMIT THERE WAS A BIT OF ELVIS.
Dolce: No there was not. It's too sexy and too glamorous for... I don't know, Elvis was a... cowboy.

Kylie: In the 70s when he was doing that, he was probably sexy. Like me.

Gabbana: The inspiration is we think about a new shape of woman. So for a long time we see the woman and the girl really skinny and really tall and we say, 'OK this is the new shape of body because it's not anorexic'. So the girl is like that... But why don't we give this woman the possibility for play with the shape, so you wear something to have the breasts bigger, the hips bigger, why not?

Dolce: This is the life, you know. This is real life.

Gabbana: The real woman's shape is this one.

Kylie: [to Dolce e Gabbana] Can we preorder the shape that we want? You have your office shape, and your evening shape...

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO BE ORDERING FROM THAT COLLECTION FOR YOUR SHOW AND FOR YOURSELF?
Well for the show... these kind gentlemen are designing three outfits especially for me, as it were. And I'd love to share the details but we can't.

SO, SIMILAR TO WHAT WE'VE SEEN BEFORE?
Gabbana: It's Dolce e Gabbana for Kylie.

Kylie: No it's different. But I'm very inspired by the dazzling garments wafting their way down the catwalk.

WHAT ABOUT THE ONE-ARMED GARMENT?
I can see the one-armed.... [gestures like one of the models, waving arm up and down]. See, I can't even control it.

I THOUGHT IT WAS A BIT GREEN FAIRY [character played by Minogue in Moulin Rouge], THAT OUTFIT.
There was a moment, yeah.

SO WHY DO YOU GUYS LIKE WORKING TOGETHER?
Well not subtlety, is it? We've done lots of things together for red carpet, for events and things like that. But for stage it's something totally different. Aside from the pure mechanics of it, you have to get in and out really quickly, it has to survive 50 shows, make in different sizes...

Gabbana: You need to dance, to move, to move your ass.

THOSE MOULDED PLASTIC CORSETS AND BUSTIERS REMINDED ME OF THAT KYLIE BOT THAT YOU HAD IN THE FEVER SHOW - WHAT WAS IT CALLED?
Kylie: The Ky-borg.

[to Gabbana] WAS THAT PLASTIC?
Gabbana: PVC

AND WAS THAT A SATIN CORSET? IT ALMOST LOOKED LIKE STAINLESS STEEL.
Gabbana: Yes.

IT LOOKED LIKE MARC NEWSON'S LOCKHEED LOUNGE.
Kylie: It's nice and light.

SO CAN YOU EVER GO TOO FAR OVER THE TOP WHEN YOU ARE DOING SHOWGIRL COSTUMES? OR IS THERE NO SUCH THING?
Kylie: Hmmmmmm... there is possibly no such thing.

HAVE YOU EVER LOOKED AT AN OUTFIT THAT YOU WERE GOING TO PERFORM IN AND SAID TO YOURSELF, 'KYLIE, THIS IS TOO MUCH'?
Kylie: Yeah but then my stylist normally harrasses me into wearing it. And he's right. I just have a shy moment, and I think.... even the Silver Nemesis from Fever...

Gabbana: Oh yeah, I remember the miniskirt.

Kylie: The miniskirt and diamante bra. The first time I tried it on with these guys and said, [whispers] 'I can't wear that on stage'. And they said, 'Yes of course you can'.

YOU HAVE STARTED REHEARSING NOW, HOW ARE YOU COPING WITH ALL THE PRESSURE OF REHEARSALS?
Kylie: I've had T-shirts made up for myself and all the crew which says, 'Kylie says relax'. Just a little reminder. I'm trying to remind myself that this is what I do and I don't have the words to tell you in this brief amount of time to how incredible it is to have this opportunity again.

ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO THE TOUR?
Yeah, and we've got work to do, us three. So look out for the...

ARE YOU WORKING TODAY?
We've got a dinner tonight. Perhaps I'll wear something from the show.

SO WHAT WOULD YOU CHOOSE FROM THE SHOW?
Mmmm... There was a long purple dress with a low back, Bedazzled, that I really liked.


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