Dolce & Gabbana
Swide Magazine
By Hugo Mc Cafferty
Men fight, women love – boxing’s universal theatre
As long as men have fists to beat each other up with there will always be a woman close to the action. Boxing is the ultimate ‘macho’ sport, but women have always been central figures on the sporting stage that is the ring.
If you thought that a men’s boxing gym was an inappropriate venue for a woman’s fashion shoot you’d be wrong. Dolce&Gabbana is a name you associate with the ultra feminine, soft lines and extravagant materials, so why is this shoot for Flair Italia March 2012, in a very macho environment so successful? Well behind every great man is a great woman, and the reality is that world of boxing belongs every bit as much to the women as it does the men.
A boxing gym is a male environment. Its rough functionality, the sounds of leather gloves on punch bags, skipping ropes, raucous camaraderie, the smell of sweat… It’s not the first place you would think of when looking for a location for a Dolce&Gabbana fashion shoot. Except that the backdrop serves to heighten the model’s femininity. Only one thing can serve to make a boxer stop in his tracks while training, and that’s when a beautiful woman walks into the gym. Inversely, it’s a known fact that the presence of women in male competitive environments serves to up the physical intensity as testosterone levels soar.
Go to any boxing match in the world, from the backstreets of Havana, to the title fights of Las Vegas and you’ll see as many women in the audience as men. The fighters’ wife or girlfriend who takes the most important position ringside. It is the woman in his life who is who shouts him on ringside, who spurs him on in training and when things go wrong, it is she who nurses his wounds and craddles his damaged ego.
You thought boxing was a individual sport right? Wrong, it’s a team sport. That team is the boxer and his woman. Look at boxing in cinema. The women in boxing films are absolutely central figures and are as important as the lead fighters. It is the long-suffering Adrian Pennino (Talia Shire), wife of Rocky Balboa whose belief in the fighter inspires him to victory. In Scorsese’s masterpiece Raging Bull, De Niro’s Jake La Motta turns on his wife Vicky (Cathy Moriarty), sparking a descent of self-destruction that destroys his career.
Dolce&Gabbana has always played with mixing and matching the male and the female and understands that ultra masculinity compliments and enhances ultra femininity and vice versa, they are inseparable, two sides of the one coin. Dolce&Gabbana and the sport of boxing do not strange bedfellows make, Dolce&Gabbana Milano Thunder proudly bear the name of their premier sponsor in the World Series of Boxing.
Boxing, just like everything else is cyclical and the world is again enthused by the fighting sport. This year during the London Olympics Women’s Boxing will make it’s debut as an Olympic event. Women are now more than ever in love with boxing and this photo shoot is a sign of the zeitgeist. But it shouldn’t surprise us, women have always been the real fighters.
http://www.swide.com/luxury-magazine/St ... e/2012/3/2
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