B ack in 2011, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana did something that made their financial people very anxious. Like many luxury fashion companies at the time, Dolce & Gabbana had a diffusion line. Logoed, more affordable and called D&G, it was aimed at a youthful market and comprised a more mass offer of T-shirts and trainers and the like.
The thinking was that this would become a useful revenue stream. And it did. It was successful.
Too successful. The designers decided that they had created a Frankenstein’s monster and were in danger of becoming known more for the D&G line than for the main Dolce & Gabbana collection. And this was never the plan.
So they killed off D&G. It was a statement of intent. And yet that was only half the story.
What gave the accountants more cause for concern was that in 2012 they announced that they were going into couture..