Living la Vita Dolce & Gabbana

“CIAO! CIAO!” It's lunchtime in Milan, Italy, when most Milanese traditionally settle into a nice plate of risotto. But inside the Dolce & Gabbana flagship store on Via della Spiga, the mood is frantic, with shoppers young and old slapping down credit cards for the label's signature $2,900 pin-striped pantsuits and $3,500 fur-trimmed coats. It seems there are not enough salespeople to handle the traffic, so Alberto Addis, the store's visual merchandiser, is lending a hand, greeting two women who have wandered past the acres of shiny black-glass walls and Murano-glass chandeliers into the leopard-print VIP room. They're in search of a $23,200 shimmering Swarovski crystal–covered dress that's been photographed in all the fashion magazines. The problem is, the dress has been sold. Addis slides open a leopard-print panel to display a full-length, polar-white Mongolian lamb coat ($10,260) that might please instead. No, no, they want the dress. He hands them off to the manager.

Back out in the store, two teenage girls are carefully sizing up a pair of jeans with broadtail patch pockets. “Ciao !” Addis says when he spots them. He doesn't know them per se, but he quickly explains that the friendliness is part of the Dolce & Gabbana strategy. “ Other designers, they are very snob. Dolce and Gabbana are never snob,” he says. “They are friendly. Ciao! Ciao!”

Even after 20 years in business, Domenico Dolce (the shorter, bald one) and Stefano Gabbana (tall and angular) remain incredibly accessible. Although their company boasts wholesale revenues of more than $1 billion and both designers live in splendor in the same central Milan building, Stefano on the sixth floor, Domenico on the fifth—never mind the houses in Roquebrune, France, and in Stromboli and Portofino, Italy—Dolce and Gabbana live what they consider an “approachable” life. Gabbana, 43, still rides around his native Milan on a Vespa (albeit a leopard-print one). And Dolce, 47, who hails from a small town near Palermo, Sicily, still walks to work every day. One even gets the sense that they remain starstruck by the celebrities who wear their clothes—although they readily admit they have Madonna on speed dial.

“The boys”—as they are referred to affectionately in fashion circles—met at a Milan nightclub in 1982. It was at a moment when, thanks to Giorgio Armani, Italian fashion had come of age. Dolce, who comes from a family of well-established tailors, had been hankering for a job in Armani's design studio. When that did not happen, he went to work for a relatively unknown designer named Giorgio Correggiari and got his new boyfriend a job too. But they had bigger dreams than just working behind the scenes at a small company. They saw the success of Armani and Versace, and they wanted a piece of that glamour too. Eventually, they decided to go for it and start their own business, with a little help from Dolce's family company, Dolce Saverio.