'This brand is still disruptive': Dolce & Gabbana Beauty CEO on building a lifestyle empire

Gianluca Toniolo speaks with The National about bringing beauty in-house at the Italian powerhouse

Gianluca Toniolo, chief executive of Dolce & Gabbana Beauty. Photo: Dolce & Gabbana

When Domenico Dolce & Stefano Gabbana burst onto the fashion scene in 1985, they did so with a dream to build their company into a “lifestyle” empire in a way that few others could imagine – especially at the time. “They were visionaries. They are one of the few brands still independent, financially, and they stuck to their values for 40 years,” says Gianluca Toniolo, chief executive of Dolce & Gabbana Beauty.

Fast forward to 2024 and the last piece of the empire puzzle – beauty and fragrance – is now out of the hands of external licensees, and brought fully in-house. The Dolce & Gabbana empire encompasses fashion, watches, jewellery, home, food, and now beauty and fragrance.

“This brand is still disruptive,” says the chief executive. “It was the first to think about a food and beverage concept, and look today how it set up beach clubs with the blue Majolica.” We are speaking in Dubai, where Toniolo is visiting to showcase the latest offerings from the newly created Dolce & Gabbana Beauty entity.

This is all relatively new – Toniolo was brought on board in September 2021 to oversee the complex transition from license to manufacturer, but only one year after officially launching under the Dolce & Gabbana umbrella, beauty and perfume revenue has already generated sales of €1.5billion ($1.6 billion).

Clearly, things are going well, but Toniolo is not interested in boasting. Instead, with 25 years of beauty industry experience under his belt at Chanel, L’Oreal and LVMH, he is aware of how small Dolce & Gabbana Beauty is compared to the behemoths of the industry.

“The giant corporations will always have more financial resources, more brands, more people, more subsidiaries, more sales force, and more, more, more,” says Toniolo, seemingly enjoying the role of outlier and knowing that Dolce & Gabbana Beauty cannot possibly go head-to-head with major beauty conglomerates such as his former employers L’Oreal or LVMH. “But what we can do is be able to move faster. We can make real decisions with Stefano and Domenico very quickly. Not just minor decisions, but strategic decisions.”

This guerrilla mentality has one important advantage, he explains: Having direct access to the designers whose names are on the bottle. “I am convinced the key to our success is the fact that we have the chance to work directly with the founders, and no one is better than them at transmitting the soul of this brand into a new creation.”

Case in point, the fragrance Devotion, which hit the shelves late last year. One of the three scents released under the newly created Dolce & Gabbana Beauty company, it was one of the first to be enshrined with the distinctive Dolce & Gabbana DNA.

When the beauty and fragrances were sold under license, Dolce & Gabbana had little say in how each was presented and packaged. Now, with everything created in-house, the same care and attention that goes into each fashion show, or high jewellery collection, is lavished on the perfume bottles and lipstick cases. Then came the matter of creating a uniquely Dolce & Gabbana perfume.

“I was looking for the fragrance to put into the Devotion bottle,” remembers Toniolo. He invited Olivier Cresp, the same nose who created the perfume Light Blue in 2001, for lunch. “It was close to Christmas, so I invited him to taste a typical Italian Christmas cake, Panettone. Immediately, he said: ‘Wow, this is Italian, original and Dolce & Gabbana. I’m going to create a new fragrance for you’.”

Two weeks later, Toniolo received a lab sample. Together with Stefano Gabbana, they knew this was exactly what they were looking for. The result is a light, powdery scent with a top note of candied orange peel, in homage to the fruit that decorates the cake.

Toniolo’s remit has been to create a fully functioning beauty and fragrance division, capable of not only creating and testing, but of manufacturing, packing and shipping too. “We had to build the company, set up the subsidiaries all over the world, bring together a team and set up the operation to manufacture more than 40 million bottles of fragrance. It’s impressive,” Toniolo explains.

Bucking all industry trends, Devotion went on sale without being pre-tested for customer feedback. “Why? Because for Stefano and Domenico, it was exactly Dolce & Gabbana,” he says. “With a giant corporation, the final goal is to make money. But Stefano and Domenico only want to see their brand where they think it deserves to be, so everything we do is not about financials, it is about elevating the brand to the next level. That is our mission.”

Now with 400 people on the payroll, and three new launches already, things are heating up. In addition to the scents, Toniolo has overseen the building of the beauty products, so the collection now features 40 shades of foundation, blush, mascara, liquid lipsticks and eyeshadows.

Speaking with Toniolo, he makes it all sound easy. It isn’t. Bringing beauty and fragrance in-house is expensive, time-consuming and comes with considerable risk – which is why it took the designers almost four decades to be in a position to do so. To date, they remain the only major Italian house to have even attempted it.

However, this is clearly about more than just bragging rights. It is a natural extension of what the designers are trying to achieve. “Stefano and Domenico consider fragrance or a touch of make-up like the last accessory you wear before going to a party, to work, or for a dinner, in the same way that you wear a bag, shoes, or a scarf. It’s the final accessory.”

“And that’s what I mean. The real secret of the success is not about launching a new fragrance or launching a new make-up product, it’s about putting the soul of the brand into each new creation. I try to transmit this feeling to everyone in the team, even though we are the underdogs,” says Toniolo. “And I love that.”