Dolce & Gabbana's Milan Penthouse Featured in Vogue Archive

In a Vogue article from May 2000, Hamish Bowles profiled the Milan apartment of fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. The designers spent two and a half years searching central Milan before finding a fifth-floor apartment, which they later expanded by acquiring the penthouse and the rest of the floor, resulting in a triplex with landscaped terraces. The renovation, which took almost as long as the search, transformed a 1970s interior into a space mixing 18th- and 19th-century gilded furnishings with works by Basquiat and Warhol. The apartment features a pool tiled with volcanic rock from Stromboli, zebra and leopard prints throughout, and a shag carpet of sheared Persian lamb. Dolce, who studied architecture in Palermo, collaborated with architect Claudio Nardi on the framework, while Rodolpho Dordoni sourced antiques and artworks. The designers' other properties include a seaside villa in Roquebrune and a house on Stromboli. For their fall fashion show, they recreated the apartment's spirit on the runway, incorporating furniture and a 1926 Tamara de Lempicka portrait that Gabbana had given Dolce as a Christmas present three years earlier. The portrait, which hangs in the entrance gallery, inspired their fall collection. The article originally appeared in the May 2000 issue of Vogue.