Dolce & Gabbana know how to create a controversy as much as they know how to throw a good party. The scene at their 20th anniversary show was always going to be the most sought after ticket at Milan Fashion Week. People were climbing over each other to enter a restored theatre in East Milan - guarded by an army of security - only to be roughly turned away if you showed up sans invitation. Dolce & Gabbana have graced the catwalks with their "molto sexy" style for two decades reflecting the preferred look of the country's natives far better than Armani's sleekness or Prada's quirkiness ever do.

Quite how everyone else feels about it tends to depend on how overtly sexy you like your clothes. If body clinging underwear-as-outerwear is your preference and you believe there is no such thing as too much animal print, than Dolce & Gabbana is for you. If you just want to blend in, go to Gap. Oddly, though, the collection was an unexpected break from their well-beloved style. It was more akin to that of John Galliano, with references to an 18th-century French style.

The show began with a sentimental retrospective film of the designers' career, although the solemn music overlaying the black and white shots of the models (including a sweetly fresh-faced Kate Moss) occasionally gave the proceedings a somewhat morbid tone, as if the designers had died and this was their wake. But things got merrily on their way, with a selection of siren red dresses followed by the usual collection of corsets and bras. The floral segment was the prettiest, with a silk coat embroidered with poppies tied loosely over starchy petticoats.

This was then followed by models flouncing down the runway in enormous ball dresses of the sort usually seen in costume dramas. But if the clothes were a bit of a break from the Dolce & Gabbana norm, the front row definitely was not. The formula one driver Jenson Button and the pop star Lee Ryan sat in the premier seats, gazing up at the models with expressions best described as appreciative. Nearby, Elizabeth Hurley stared intently up at each new frock. And when the designers themselves came out to take a break to the strains of Barry White, all seemed back to normal in the Dolce & Gabbana empire.