Kim Kardashian and Dolce & Gabbana: The backstory

Kim Kardashian's love of Dolce & Gabbana goes way back, and the affection showed in her curation of their latest collection, drawing on archival looks from 1987-2007.

She remembers growing up watching her mother dress in Dolce & Gabbana for date nights with her stepfather, recalling "she always looked so smart and so strong." One year, Kardashian's borrowed one of her mum's black Dolce & Gabbana dresses with a built-in bra and choker to wear for a family Christmas card, a look, she said, "I will never forget.”

When Kardashian and her sisters owned a store, she borrowed her father's credit card to buy a bunch of D&G dresses, jeans and belts before her paycheck came in.

Even the family dogs were named Dolce and Gabbana. Gabbana was a black labrador, Dolce a tiny chihuahua.

"It is very close to reality,'' Stefano Gabbana quipped in a presentation for the new collection.

But no matter how hard she tried, even deploying her mother, Kris Jenner, to help make her case, the designers refused to open their archives. "The past is the past,'' Domenico Dolce explained. "We try to go ahead with the new generation."

That is, until Kardashian proved she had the right stuff.

When Kourtney Kardashian married Travis Barker in Italy, social media swarmed with the vintage Dolce & Gabbana dresses she and her sisters wore. They were all from Kim Kardashian's private collection, which she accrued with the help of a book of more than 100 desired Dolce & Gabbana looks she and her stylist compiled years before.

"Everything looked insane. It was so fun,'' Kardashian said of the wedding looks. "I think (the designers) were surprised I came with all my own stuff and I had been collecting it for years."

Dolce said the wedding photos persuaded them to dig into the archives, and he approached Kardashian about the project.

"We were afraid that the vintages dresses would look old. Instead, they were still contemporary,'' Dolce said.

And so the new Spring-Summer 2023 collection was born, with the designers selecting looks from the past that they loved, many with memories attached working with models like Linda Evangelista and Monica Bellucci. Kardashian curated from there.

"After all these years, this is all of the stuff we would wear today,'' Kardashian said. "As a designer, I would just think that is so cool, to see everyone trying to emulate the looks. And why not do a full collection, obviously with some new pieces in there, but just reimagined in a way that we would wear it today, which is so similar to how it was shot and worn back then."