The Changing Face of Fashion Brand Management -- Italian Style

In a very important article about the future of brands, fashion and the retail business, the Wall Street Journal focuses on the Spring 2010 D&G runway show in Milan last week, in which key execs from Bergdorf’s, Saks and Neiman Marcus were in the second and third rows, upstaged by young bloggers and Internet retailers.

Garance Dore blog is a new kind of communication — an original voice of a ‘normal’ woman who loves fashion and style. Her blog doesn’t sound as if it’s written by a pr agency. Instead, she writes: “Yeah okay, t-shirts are all good and well. But what if you started wondering what you’ll be wearing come winter? After I got back to Paris and had a night of about 72 hours of sleep, I stuck my nose outside and I definitely felt it. There’s a cool breeze out there. Yep yep, early in the morning, in the shade, it’s chilly. So now it’s high time for me to get out my little notebook, my wish-list for autumn, which, I am convinced, will bedazzle you as much for its originality as for its realism. Aaaah Garance, your originality bedazzles us just as much your realism.”Federico Marchetti, chief executive of online retailer Yoox occupied a front row seat at D&G, along with four bloggersfrom Bryanboy.com; jakandjil.com; garancedore.fr and The Sartorialist.

These epic changes are rocking not only the world of brick and mortar retailers but also magazine media like Vogue — who resisted putting free content on Style.com, until they risked losing their audience to other websites.

Yoox’s Marchetti has launched designer websites, in addition to his own.

The WSJ reports that D&G has 30 employees working on new media. Their website Swide is brilliantly executed by Marchetti. While largely self-promotional, Swide succeeds in selling a lifestyle, brand concept to devotees of the Dolce & Gabbana lifestyle.

Logging on just now, we read Dita Von Teese’s tweets for the week; Madonna was on Letterman last night, calling her marriage to Guy Ritchie ‘The Bush Years’ and they had pizza and martinis together after the show.

Beyond our upscale celeb infusion, we also learn that Wet & Wild Living is becoming a reality.

Swipe takes us to Palm Island in Dubai and World Islands. Combining fashion and Smart Sensuality thinking, Swipe writes “Whereas Venice was mainly consgtructed on existing small islands, and The Netherlands used dams, Dubai’s solution is to build completely new islands to solve their survival problems.”

Swipe takes us to Almere, a Dutch town actively committed to the future. Following that link — not so full of info — took me into a Google search landing me at EU-DIGEST, a blog I like very much and will add here at A of C.

OK. This isn’t ForeignPolicy.com but the writing isn’t typical fashion trivia either.

Dolce&Gabbana is controlling their brand message, via the content strategy of Swipe.

Throughout our websites, we track this new media approach to brand management. Not only is it digital but it’s democratic and not hugely reliant on retailers and even magazines to define and communicate directly with the consumer or readers.

This morning’s learning excursion came from Dolce&Gabbana; tomorrow Vuitton?

Passion!!

via Flickr’s LJ. who sums up this moment so fabulously: Italians…the most beautiful and passionate people on earth! They rejoice in each other like no other nation I know. I love it!.

In a perfect ending to a DolceVita story American photographer Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist and French illustrator Garance Dore are a long-distance couple, friends and colleagues first and lovers next. For their story, turn to the Guardian UK. Love, love, love. Anne