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The tax-evading designers are 'appalled' at the allegation that they are tax evaders and shut all their shops
Age: 54 and 50 respectively, 28 altogether.
Eh? Domenico Dolce is 54, Stefano Gabbana is 50. The fashion house they founded together is 28.
I'm with you. Appearance? Exuberantly glamorous. Currently also appalled.
How so? A Milan city council member, Franco d'Alfonso, referred to them in a newspaper article as "tax evaders". In response, the duo promptly shut up their shops in the city and posted signs reading "Closed out of indignation".
And quite right too! Who wouldn't be indignant at such a slight? Well, maybe a pair of fashion designers who have been convicted of tax evasion (by selling their brands to a company ostensibly trading out of Luxembourg, where you pay 4% corporate tax instead of Italy's 37%) and sentenced to 20 months in jail and required to pay damages of €500,000 to the taxman.
Like who? Do you really not see where I'm going with this? Like Dolce & like Gabbana. Like Dolce & Gabbana.
Really? They've been under investigation for the past six years and were convicted last month. Do you not read the papers?
I can't read anything with my Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses on. They're very dark. Also, Anna Wintour once said that newsprint gives you wrinkles. Or fat thighs. Or something. Anyway – I like their style with the "Closed" signs. What else did they do? After Stefano G tweeted a response to the article to his 411,000 Twitter followers – "revolting and pitiful" – and took out full-page ads in two leading national newspapers, plus one in the International Herald Tribune protesting against the "continuous slander and insults", the mayor of Milan offered to meet them.
And? The pair have not decided yet whether to take him up on the offer.
This all seems a bit unfair. Isn't tax evasion in Italy pretty much de rigueur? Your elected representatives get to sleep with underage prostitutes instead of running the county and in return he doesn't bother you for state funds. That was before the austerity regime kicked in. Now the country is so desperate for money it is having to break with tradition and enforce the law.
O tempora! O mores! O well.
Do say: "Closed in high camp solidarity."
Don't say: "Not so much of the dolce (& Gabbana) vita now, eh?"
