Dolce and Gabbana’s latest menswear show landed with a familiar thud. Row after row of almost exclusively white male models, styled in variations of Mediterranean machismo, luxury nostalgia, and rigid masculinity. In 2026, this is not oversight. It is a choice. And for a brand with a long, well documented history of exclusionary views, that choice carries weight.
Fashion is never neutral. Casting is storytelling, and an all white lineup sends a message about who belongs in the fantasy and who does not. When diversity exists everywhere in global culture, in the streets of Milan itself, its absence on a runway backed by immense power and capital becomes conspicuous. The sameness was not subtle. It was striking, and for many, exhausting.
Bella Hadid articulated that frustration plainly in her public comment, writing that it was “embarrassing” that people still support the company, calling out not only the brand but the entire ecosystem that enables it, models, stylists, casting directors, editors, and magazines alike. Her words cut because they widened the lens. This is not just about one show. It is about complicity. About how an industry continues to reward brands that refuse to evolve, while expecting audiences to separate aesthetics from ethics.
Dolce and Gabbana’s defenders often argue that the brand is simply being “true to itself.” That defense collapses under scrutiny, because what the brand has been true to, repeatedly, is a worldview rooted in exclusion.
Their record is extensive. In 2018, the brand faced global backlash after releasing an ad campaign in China that featured a Chinese woman struggling to eat Italian food with chopsticks, framed through a patronizing and racist lens. The fallout intensified when alleged private messages from Stefano Gabbana surfaced, dismissing China and doubling down with offensive language. The response was not accountability but defensiveness.
Their history of homophobia is equally entrenched. Despite both founders being openly gay, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have repeatedly voiced regressive views, most infamously criticizing same sex parenting and IVF, referring to children born through these means as “synthetic.” These remarks prompted widespread condemnation and boycotts, including from celebrities who had previously supported the brand.
Rather than learning, the brand has often positioned itself as a victim of “cancel culture,” framing critique as persecution instead of consequence. That posture matters. It reveals a refusal to engage meaningfully with the harm caused, and it helps explain why moments like an all white menswear casting continue to happen without apology or reflection.
The latest show does not exist in isolation. It sits neatly within this legacy. The hyper controlled image of masculinity presented, pale, narrow, uniform, reinforces an outdated hierarchy of desirability that fashion claims to be dismantling. It erases the realities of contemporary men, and it sidelines entire communities whose cultural influence the industry regularly profits from elsewhere.
What makes this moment particularly stark is how unnecessary it is. Dolce and Gabbana have the resources, the platform, and the global reach to do better without sacrificing creativity. Other heritage houses have managed to expand their visual language without losing identity. The refusal here feels ideological, not artistic.
Bella Hadid’s comment resonated because it named what many are thinking but are often pressured to overlook. Supporting a brand is not just about buying clothes. It is about endorsing values, or at least tolerating them. Silence, especially from industry gatekeepers, becomes a form of approval.
The real question is no longer why Dolce and Gabbana continue to present work like this. The question is why the fashion system continues to reward them for it. Until that changes, all white runways will keep appearing, not as mistakes, but as statements.
And people will keep asking, rightly, how anyone can still align with them.