Photo: The Current Daily
Fashion icons Dolce & Gabbana put on a tech-filled show in Milan last Sunday. In an elaborate marketing stunt, D&G sent drones down the runway to display next season’s handbags.
The show kicked with a request from the brand for all 600 guests to turn off their WiFi. D&G indicated that this was because they had a special surprise up its sleeve. Shortly thereafter a handful of drones then opened the show by flying along the catwalk. Each carried a new color of next season’s bags guided by assistants in white coats just in case something went wrong. The drones hovered in place, rotated on the spot, and then returned backstage.4
No Stranger to Tech
Dolce & Gabbana is no stranger to tapping into tech to engage with a millennial audience. D&G has been increasingly turning their focus to this audience starting in 2015. This started with sending models down the runway taking selfies and has continued with increasing collabs with young celebrities.
This season also marks the second time the label hosted an additional ‘secret’ fashion show. On Saturday night at a downtown party spot, the “Secrets & Diamonds” show featured models and selected influencers donning evening wear, including 20-something-year-old members of the British aristocracy, who the next day then watched the drone spectacle from the front row.
Dolce & Gabbana is not the first luxury label to deploy drones to ignite a conversation that one could argue deters from the actual fashion taking place. In 2014, Fendi worked with Unit9 and Google to live-stream its AW14 runway show by using drones that shot models from above. The role of technology as gimmick continues to rule the runway, it would seem.
