Dolce & Gabbana's first digital Alta Moda: a tantalising glimpse of the lockdown lives of the super rich

The curtains framing the elegant floor to ceiling windows in the opulent Palazzo Labus billowed evocatively. Diligent students of visualisation techniques might just have been able to feel the warm summer Milanese breeze, even if they were tuning in from rainy London or cloudy Beijing.

This is Dolce & Gabbana’s first Alta Moda show to stream digitally and if it proves successful, will present the designers with quite the paradox. Back in 2012 when Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana launched their Alta Moda collection, it was part of a strategy to re-elevate their brand. They had just shuttered D&G, the lucrative diffusion line that did a storming in distressed jeans and crop tops. Both Dolce and Gabbana felt it was time to re-establish what their label had first become famous for: expert tailoring and a sexy but refined sensuality borrowed directly from 1950s and early 1960s Italian cinema.

Those early Alta Moda shows were dedicated to outdoing Paris’s couture shows, all of them held in that city along traditional catwalk show lines. In contrast, Dolce & Gabbana curated money-can’t-buy experiences in Italy’s glory spots – Taormina courtyards, Venetian private mansions, even Domenico Dolce’s private garden on a promontory overlooking Portofino – for hand selected clients from the world’s 0.01 per cent and a handful of journalists. Can a digital presentation, as required by Covid-19 social distancing rules, begin to replicate that?

It depends. If you’re looking for a convenient window on the duo’s latest Alta Moda Collection, this hit the spot. In evident response to the new, dialled-back social curricula of their clients, Dolce & Gabbana focussed on pyjama dressing, a category often burdened with the unpromising name of loungewear, but long since raised to an art form by this duo.

Floor length appliqued silk or chiffon caftans, some dripping with feathers and teamed with matching one piece or big knicker two piece swimwear and enormous brimmed straw hats, velvet trimmed negligees, baby doll dresses with matching capes, jewel smothered kimono dressing gowns and actual pyjama sets, offered a tantalising glimpse into the lockdown lives of their clients which appear to feature a lot of drifting across pool terraces and reclining on chaises longs. There were 47 models in total, in classic Dolce & Gabbana make-up and hair (black feline liner, elaborate chignons and head pieces), all created, the house was quick to assure, “under Milan’s strict social distancing rules”.

A jumble of patterns – from nostalgic, classic Italian souvenir postcard scenes to animal prints and tie dye ( a superior nod to one of the big DIY trends of the past three months) and a spectrum of colours that ran from the hot pink of dawn through to the leaf green of a palm tree and the orange of the dipping sun made for an uplifting experience, even viewed through the diminished lens of a laptop. Impossible to ignore, because of the way the cameras were positioned, were the empty gilt chairs and sofas (and at Alta Moda they really are gilt).

Normally these would be filled with intensely perfumed, coiffed and groomed clients as lavishly dressed as the models, some with their own TikTok video crews in tow. Alta Moda has since its early days, been a self-perpetuating economic bubble, with clients buying Alta Moda outfits to wear to the next Alta Moda event.

Just how many clients tuned in from their homes has yet to be ascertained, since the show is available for them to watch for several days. In the past, there would be a race to order favourite items, in real time, as the show happened, before anyone else (although copies may be ordered in different colours, there should, in theory, be only one of the original). In the new world, the process is more sedate. Clients make a wish-list and then wait to be contacted by their personal sales representative. Perhaps this is a more seemly way of ordering dresses that cost tens of thousands.

Stripped of most of its context, it was interesting to see just how well the clothes stood up – I immediately wanted to change into a pair of silky pyjamas for the rest of my working day. But in the long term, can digital ever be aligned with the values of Alta Moda? For sure it’s economically compelling, for any brand that finds itself temporarily cash strapped. And it’s certainly efficient, as well as an effective way to see the details close up.

As a journalist, I appreciate both those qualities when reviewing shows, but for clients, I suspect, efficiency is not one of the defining qualities of Alta Moda. And yet...even the super rich can't indefinitely ignore their carbon footprint, even if only for the sake of being aligned with fashionable thinking. So digital has a lot to offer. With brands increasingly pressurised into making explicit declarations about their ethics - on everything from #metoo to #BlacklivesMatter - that’s an issue they may not be able to gloss over for much longer.

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