Dolce & Gabbana

Dolce & Gabbana launches couture

June 27, 2012 5:38 pm by Vanessa Friedman

Today Dolce & Gabbana confirmed rumours that it will create a small couture collection for the first time, to be showed July 9th to a group of clients in Taormina Sicily. The unveiling will take place far from the classic couture environs of Paris; the eye of the Chambre Syndicale, the governing body of the French couture tradition; and the fashion media. The choice is strategic for a number for reasons.
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Posted in Couture, Fashion, Luxury goods |

Occupy the runway

June 19, 2012 1:50 pm by Vanessa Friedman

As far as strange, opaque industries go, modelling is up there with espionage and rocket science: it’s a world built on image, and invested in preserving its mystery. Recently, however, two inmates (intimates?) have started to speak out about the reality, and what’s interesting is they’re not talking about the sex/drugs/eating disorders issues we are used to, but rather employment-law-type infractions: pay inequality, ridiculously long working hours, bad working conditions, and child labour. Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Menswear, Politics, Womenswear |

Chanel scents a change in strategic direction

May 10, 2012 12:33 pm by Vanessa Friedman

After Nicole Kidman, after Audrey Tatou, after Carol Bouquet, comes…Brad Pitt? Chanel has just announced the latter will be the new, and first male, face of their cash cow product, aka the perfume Chanel No 5, aka the one of the best-selling perfumes in the world — since it debuted 1921. Now, that’s a surprise. Mr Pitt’s appointment, not the success of the scent.

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Posted in Luxury goods |

Italian economic reforms hit the fashion industry

January 31, 2012 4:25 pm by Vanessa Friedman

The law passed last December by Mario Monti’s new technocratic government that limits cash transactions in Italy to EUROS 1000 and under has had some unexpected January repercussions on the fashion industry — or so I gathered at a recent, highy entertaining, lunch with Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, aka Dolce & Gabbana.

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Posted in Ecomonics, Fashion |

Fashion gets a digital game-changer

January 23, 2012 10:50 am by Vanessa Friedman

In the race to have the most connected catwalk — a race that has seen
Burberry sell direct-from-runway and Tweet each look as it appears, Dolce
and Gabbana live-stream the audience and the backstage preparations, and
every brand with a Facebook page host its show in real time — KCD, the
global publicity powerhouse, may have just trumped everyone. Today they are
announcing the “Digital Fashion Shows”, aka an “innovative information
delivery system”. Say that ten times fast. Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Marketing, Shows |

Estée Lauder’s web success

September 27, 2011 11:07 pm by Vanessa Friedman

In the “can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-giant-branded-oak-tree” category I would like to nominate all luxury industry watchers (myself included), who have been so distracted by Burberry’s public assumption of tech-God status, recently met by Gucci, that they have TOTALLY OVERLOOKED the real challenger to both those thrones: Estee Lauder.

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Posted in Beauty, Internet, Luxury goods |

Burberry’s web-wizardry a disappearing spell?

June 2, 2011 12:51 pm by Vanessa Friedman

Well, this is a shocker: today a digital think tank called L2 is publishing a study, “L2 Prestige 100®: Facebook IQ,” which ranks the high-end brands as “Genius, gifted, average, challenged, and feeble” according to who uses Facebook best, and out of brands that span the auto, watch & jewellery, fashion, beauty, and spirits & champagne sectors, Burberry, normally held up as THE most web-savvy, digi-forward company in the luxury industry, ranks…average. Actually, it’s number 49.
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Posted in Fashion, Internet, Luxury goods, Marketing |

The Economist fashions a cause for Scottish knitting

December 1, 2010 4:47 pm by Vanessa Friedman

Clothes issues can make common cause for us all. How else to interpret The Economist’s sudden interest in (and defense of) the Scottish Fair Isle sweater? The mag has taken up the cause of the Shetland knitters, whose signature snowflake designs have been co-opted — horrors! — by the high fashion industry without proper accreditation.  Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Politics, Ready-to-wear |

Will the Italian taxman cometh for Dolce & Gabbana?

October 18, 2010 5:36 pm by Vanessa Friedman

Over the weekend the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore reported that, two years after it began, the tax authorities’ probe into Dolce & Gabbana’s business has been closed, and the upshot is…silence from the prosecutors. Has the government decided they were wrong? Or is something more dramatic coming? The fashion world is on the edge of its seat!

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Posted in Fashion, Finance, Luxury goods, Politics, Recession |

The bottom line on luxury’s low digital IQ

October 12, 2010 7:06 pm by Vanessa Friedman

It never rains but it pours (and in Brooklyn, where I live, it just hailed). After the Gap on-line logo hoo-ha at the end of last week comes a report from the Stern business school at New York University and the think tank L2 entitled “Digital IQ Index: Luxury,” looking at how 72 luxury brands are handling themselves on-line, on their websites, social media, digital marketing and mobile apps. Guess what? They’re stuck in the mud!

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Posted in Fashion, Internet, Luxury goods, Marketing |
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