By guest author Christina Binkley from Vogue Business
Clienteling is core to attracting and retaining top-spending customers. Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda and its shoppers offer up some key insights to editor-at-large Christina Binkley.
If any fashion clients seem unlikely to shop online, it’s the elite group of women — and some men — who flock to Italy each July for Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda fêtes. The brand’s Italian version of haute couture costs tens to hundreds of thousands of euros, requires multiple fittings and measurements and is custom-made for public moments like weddings, galas and lavish parties that widely disappeared in the pandemic.
But Alta Moda’s clients have turned out to be loyal and digitally savvy, willing to click ‘buy now’ from their couches instead of shopping at an atelier in Portofino or Capri. While many luxury companies have reported massive revenue shrinkage, Dolce & Gabbana expects to far outpace the market at its Alta Moda couture line with revenues this year that are on track to catch up with last year, says Giuseppina Cannizzaro, who heads the division (and is the niece of co-designer and co-founder Domenico Dolce). They’re anticipating substantial growth in 2021 when the wedding and gala seasons return.
“Fingers crossed!” says Cannizzaro, superstitious, with a cheerful grin (we spoke by video conference). Sales of jewellery — tiaras are a big Alta Moda seller — and women’s fashion have been strong, although male clients cut back sharply on their spending, she says.
While they are selling to an elite population, Dolce & Gabbana’s approach to Alta Moda offers lessons for any brand in relationship marketing. The group took downtime forced by Italy’s shutdown to regroup and reach out with personalised messages that reminded clients of purchases and parties in the past. They took orders based on past collections and tailored new designs to a pandemic lifestyle, creating a capsule collection of caftans, kimonos and loose-fitting garments such as linen and poplin shirts for men that are less wildly embellished and don’t require the close tailoring of most Alta Moda collections.
“Maybe humble is not the right word,” Cannizzaro says, struggling to describe the stylistic shift. “More relaxed fits. But it’s sincere and very, very, very Italian.”
Clients, hunkered down in yachts and second homes around the world, responded by shopping online via WhatsApp and WeChat. “I was afraid the oldest ladies would not be comfortable with digital, but they really enjoyed it,” says Cannizzaro.
Shawn Goodman, a client from Seattle, set her alarm for 1:30 am at her Paradise Valley, Arizona home, mirrored her phone to her television to stream the capsule collection show in Italy, then placed an order for several silk blouses and an off-shoulder caftan.
“It was a little like QVC shopping in the middle of the night,” says Goodman, who is 63. As for the caftans, she says, “I wore them on my boat, but nobody saw them.”
The brand is now hoping clients will return en masse to Florence on 2 September as it resumes the formula that made its fortunes: a runway show and adjacent parties that draw clients to spend several days enmeshed in the Dolce & Gabbana world. Initial RSVPs have been strong, the brand says. But digital sales will still play a role. As an American, due to numerous Covid-19 bans on travellers with American passports, Goodman is unable to fly to Italy for the Alta Moda show. Instead, she plans to order again from home. And Dolce & Gabbana is working on plans to bring the Alta Moda collection to its US clients later.
The Florence events, like all Alta Moda fêtes throughout Italy, will involve runway shows, dinners, dancing on tables — fun-loving Stefano Gabbana often dons a hot pink wig — and lavish marketing of the region’s food and traditions. In a new move, Dolce & Gabbana has created a tour of the Florentine ateliers of regional artists and fine craftspeople who have agreed to take orders from Alta Moda clients.
This is a far step from what Dolce & Gabbana executives feared last March when Italy shut down after being hard hit early in the pandemic. Cannizzaro was in Qatar on 8 March, when the lockdown occurred, and her team was working with clients split between Lombardy, Qatar, Brazil and Shanghai. “I was so shocked. We were travelling weekly to Japan,” she says. The team considered assembling in London, but soon London’s Covid-19 outbreak was even worse.
“We discovered Zoom and Skype for business,” says Cannizzaro, who was herself so digitally un-savvy that, “I wasn’t even able to send an invitation.”
She soon figured out the technology; now she says she can’t imagine speaking to someone without live video. When the atelier was able to open in May, it finished up prior orders while the designers began work on new collections such as the relaxed capsule this summer. To their surprise, the efforts unearthed some new clients in Japan, Shanghai and Los Angeles via word of mouth.
To stay in touch with clients, they combed through photos of past events and shared a video compilation bookended like a Hallmark moment with opening and closing messages reading “Precious moments” and “Missing you!”
Goodman’s video recalls how much she loves a party. There she is kissing Domenico Dolce, and in another, canoodling with Stefano Gabbana. She dances in a frothy pink wig, poses with a variety of models, guests and friends of the brand, always decked out in a colourful array of gowns and baubles.
When she texted the video to me, Goodman wrote, “I think when you watch it, you can really see the joy it brings me wearing their beautiful creations, it goes beyond looking fabulous…they make you feel fabulous!”
Cha-ching
The combination of high-touch, personalised messaging and digital sales made easy through platforms like WhatsApp and WeChat indicate that luxury’s top spenders are willing to shop online, as long as it’s tailored to them. As long as collections still resonate, they’ll buy. Goodman, a frequent Bulgari client and formerly a client of Dior and other haute couture houses, says she had lost her taste for fashion shows and collections before discovering Alta Moda in 2015 through Cameron Silver, formerly a vintage fashion dealer and now fashion director of Halston.
“They make me feel alive and young and pretty. I love Domenico and Stefano. I love the whole group,” she says. “A lot of designers I’ve known before, they go and smoke with their muses in the corner, and they don’t even say hello to you.”
Her fashion spending is “pretty much all Dolce now”, she says.