DOLCE & GABBANA BRINGS BACK THE DRAMA OF BEING YOURSELF

It begins with a small disturbance, almost a social mistake. A man in the front row stands, adjusts his coat, and walks off as if he has somewhere else to be. Then another. The runway is already in the room, and Milan has to admit it: the show has started before anyone applauds.

Dolce & Gabbana’s Men’s Fall/Winter 2026 collection, titled "The Portrait of Man", flips the usual fashion grammar inside out. Instead of declaring one ideal, it proposes a crowd of selves. It reads like a manifesto against sameness, a point the house states plainly in its official show notes.

The staging makes the argument land. Models appear among the guests, rising from the audience and only later claiming the catwalk. 

A RUNWAY STAGED LIKE A PORTRAIT STUDIO

Calling the show a “portrait” in 2026 is a provocation. Portraiture implies attention and patience, a refusal to average out a face. It also implies judgment.

Who gets to be seen, and how?

Before the clothes, a short film offered a series of character studies as digital portraits, setting the tone: less “theme,” more observation. Then the lighting did the rest, cutting figures with painterly intensity. Chiaroscuro, simply put, is the drama created by light and shadow. Here, illumination became a stylist. You noticed a lapel before you noticed a logo.

The front row, too, functioned like an extension of the cast. Benson Boone and Jung Hae In were among the guests photographed arriving in Milan on January 17, 2026, alongside other familiar faces, including Claudio Santamaria. Celebrity attendance is not news. 

Here, it underlined the thesis: different public personas, different codes, one room.

SOFTENED TAILORING AS A LANGUAGE OF CHARACTER

Dolce & Gabbana has long understood that menswear is psychological. A shoulder can signal certainty, defensive posture, or sheer performance. For Fall/Winter 2026, tailoring becomes autobiography, less rulebook and more self-definition.

Silhouettes skew generous, often oversized without aggression. Coats are long and protective. Knitwear comes big, almost architectural, as if warmth has to look substantial to feel real. The collection plays the high-low game the house knows well: a velvet blazer with denim, a military jacket over the kind of jeans that ruled early-2000s red carpets. It is nostalgia, yes, but it is also anthropology. Men return to the looks that once made them feel visible.

Texture carries much of the narrative, from fantasy-scale furs to dense knits, plus a wink of leopard that reads like dressing-gown glamour. In a season when so much menswear is optimized for the feed, Dolce & Gabbana pushes the opposite idea. These clothes want proximity.

SPORT, CEREMONY, AND THE QUESTION OF ADORNMENT

One of the most telling moves in "The Portrait of Man" is its refusal to keep categories separate. Formalwear borrows the authority of uniforms, and sporty references interrupt the solemnity. The styling suggests a man who moves between roles without changing his inner voice. It echoes the show’s insistence on plural masculine identities rather than a single template.

And then there’s men’s jewelry. Adornment is often framed as trend, rebellion, or marketing. Here it reads more intimate, closer to a signature than an accessory. A chain, a pendant, a brooch: small choices, but often the most personal decisions a man makes in public. Clothes cover you. Jewelry declares you.

ONE COLLECTION, A HUNDRED PORTRAITS

There is a tension at the heart of this show, and it is worth naming. A gallery can be breathtaking. It can also be exhausting. At the scale of nearly a hundred looks, the risk is dispersion. Even a manifesto needs editing.

FashionNetwork’s review sharpened the critique: plenty of strong clothes, less focus, a sense that the range occasionally wandered. Yet that wandering may be the point. Men today are fragmented by design. Their wardrobes are built from contradictory demands: softness and armor, comfort and ceremony, privacy and display. To ask for a single, coherent “male ideal” would be the real fantasy.

So the question turns uncomfortable, and therefore interesting.