In Milan With Dolce & Gabbana

The hangman's knock, traditionally just before dawn, was replaced by a strident alarm ring to start my long day in and out of Milan in order to interview Dolce & Gabbana for The Sunday Times Style. But this time it was slightly different. This was an interview to camera, ready for the Style website that will start in May. So it seemed that it might be worth travelling for eight hours for one hour of chat.

And, of course, it was. Just to be in the baroque scarlet and leopard-skin room furnished with imposing 19th-century Sicilian furniture and lots of large, sloppy dogs was worth any early call for its tongue-in-cheek high-camp kitsch, quite apart from a heavy gilt frame containing a black bra and a red rose that I found strangely compelling. Operatic is the word for this stage-set of a room, which is referred to in D&G parlance as "the Office".

But it was the Boys, as Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce are always called, who were the real enchantment. Sitting close together, their body language and the way they included each other in every answer, both by gesture and comment, made it clear that this partnership, despite the fact that they now go their own ways sexually, is still the love relationship that began so long ago when they first met as young men. Stefano, tall, angular and voluble; Domenico, smaller, more considered and less dramatic. Together, they spun a fine story of their work, pleasures, problems and triumphs. I wish all hours went as quickly. As you'll be able to see for yourself in the early summer.