Just about every fashion-aware person out there can identify what the D&G means on a garment, perfume, or bag. Since the brand’s founding in the late 1980s, Dolce & Gabbana has set the tone for opulent, custom-made gowns and on-the-pulse streetwear. In the new millennium, the fashion house bravely charted a new course by introducing a high-end and exclusive lifestyle brand, aptly called Alta Moda. Here’s how Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda is challenging other fashion brands to evolve.
Expanding the Concept of Haute Couture
While D&G’s Alta Moda clients order one-of-a-kind clothing items that no one else in the world owns, the brand is constantly working to expand the concept of haute couture. Of course, haute couture refers to custom-made French fashion, and Dolce & Gabbana has been working tirelessly to put Italian Alta Moda, or high fashion, on the map as a foil to the French taste for demure and reserved style.
The Alta Moda lifestyle brand may embrace haute couture when it comes to clothing, but it also reaches for more. The collections also feature exclusive jewelry, men’s wear, hats, buttons, and homewares as part of the Alta Casa line, with recognizable connections to Dolce & Gabbana’s designer home collection line Casa for luxury-minded consumers.
Staging Epic Alta Moda Events
Most fashion houses rely on their seasonal runway shows to drum up excitement about their brands, but Dolce & Gabbana has challenged the status quo by holding epic Alta Moda events once a year. Over the span of three or four days, D&G invites a few hundred of the most elite clients alongside celebrities and artists to take part in a luxury lifestyle experience curated and hosted by the brand.
D&G held past events in iconic Italian venues such as Venice and Portofino as well as in New York City, and participants enjoyed much more than fashion shows. Elegant and exclusive parties and open-air dinners set the mood against a backdrop of exclusive designs from Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda lines. The combination of exclusive events and fashion and lifestyle is something no other fashion house has attempted.
Making Luxury an Exclusive Lifestyle
High-end fashion is meant to be aspirational for the everyday person, and Dolce & Gabbana has taken the image of exclusive luxury to the next level. When the brand introduced Alta Moda in 2012, it was an attempt to entice the general public with images of intangible glamour and an exclusive lifestyle existing in a dream realm where the elite play.
The brand could have played it safe by digging into their skill with hand-made, opulent garments, but D&G envisioned an even greater future by crafting an entire experience, a high-end lifestyle of luxury.
With D&G’s move into luxury lifestyle, every other fashion brand needs to stay on its toes. The Italian fashion house has shown that it has no time to rest on its laurels, and it will only continue to evolve and reach for the stars, literally and figuratively, with designer wine, chocolate, kitchen appliances, and more on the horizon.
