Quietly opened in December 2018 following the immensely controversial incident in its history, Dolce & Gabbana‘s redesigned flagship in Piazza di Spagna is undoubtedly one of the most stunning luxury stores not just in Rome but globally. It is also a vivid reflection of the incredible achievement of Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce to build from scratch in 33 years a multi-million dollar luxury brand with a coherent creative direction and a consistent vision based on creativity, craftsmanship deeply rooted in Italian heritage.
But the creative duo who are also the owners of the empire they built are also showing, probably for the first time, that they know how to listen and how to adapt to a public backlash by being quiet and somber. However, this has indirectly shown that an established luxury brand can also thrive without an excessive social media presence and instead, let the ‘creations speak’ in an exclusive way.
While the Dolce & Gabbana brand has long been forgiven after the huge scandal and public outcry, it will take much more time for the ‘duo’ to be ‘forgiven’. A sensible move would be for the two to take one more step back and leave the operational management entirely up to a professional executive team while retaining full control over the creative direction,
In an era ruled by digital and social media, it has been fascinating to discover the Roman store of the brand, with extremely few photos available and even less English language articles. Instead, the company focused cleverly on the local market and over 90% of the posts are in Italian in Italian outlets.
My ‘discovery’ also comes days after The Met Gala in New York where Dolce & Gabbana’s ‘brilliant’ absence may actually generate indirectly much more praise and effectiveness.
Situated in Rome’s iconic Piazza di Spagna, Dolce & Gabbana’s new “Modern Baroque” store unfolds between precious marbles, inscribed Latin mottos, and frolicking angels among rich mosaics and sweeping LED screens. It’s here in the Eternal City that the designer duo has decided to give tribute to the genius loci of a spectacular space that fuses the past and present for a truly unique experience.
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