okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well …

Not to be undone in the transformation of the presence of traditional industries from old media to Web 2.0 is Dolce and Gabbana’s new Swide Magazine.  As in all things Dolce and Gabbana this offering is tounge in cheek with the right amount of schtick and irreverence to work for those  bored with fashion looking for something different, which is where Dolce and Gabbana’s D&G label typically meets consumers anyway.  In fact it isn’t really apparent that Dolce & Gabbana has anything to do with this ezine, which is probably a good thing as it finds a very discrete way to suck in those skeptical of fashion websites.

Branded a luxury magazine the site offers a fancy logo with a rudimentary typeface that feels more like one of those old school typefonts included with Microsoft Word or Open Office that is more to appeal to old school types as opposed to being anything new and modern.  In fact much of it has a fun nineteen fifties appeal.  It is more in line with the odd website of Martin Margiela than anything new and chic, like say perhaps Dolce and Gabbana’s actual website.  Unlike the Margiela website though this doesn’t feel like you’re a webmaster viewing ftp on a regular web browser checking to see if images and multimedia have been uploaded to the right directories.

It also lacks the ghetto sophistication of the Marc Jacobs website, in which flash animation takes over the entire viewing area of the browser and the latest runway show begins to play automatically.  No this is a very hands on Web 1.0 site in a 2.0 age.  So I checked out the content; one of the articles talks about what Paris Hilton wants for Christmas, another suggests that the lead designers of Dolce and Gabbana are doing at the moment and yet another on Andy Warhol.  But aside from the email I recieved from Dolce and Gabbana about the site or the description for the Google entry “Swide is a magazine that describes the Dolce & Gabbana universe through digital communication” it isn’t clear this site has anything to do with Dolce and Gabbana at all.

This is great though their efforts are posited exactly as they should be.  If nothing else this is far more interesting and sophisticated of an effort than other fashion websites we have seen.  It is also interesting to note that Dolce and Gabbana tried to include a lot of this functionality on their own website perhaps to no avail, as searching through the site can be a labor of love.  It’s also great that this isn’t Tom Ford’s website, which clearly is nothing more than a promotion for a brand that it would appear that you have to visit the store on Madison Avenue to see for yourself.  It would appear that even now Tom still is not allowing any retailers to stock the menswear at all, of course only a handful of outlets allow you to purchase the eyewear or beauty products online.  Luckily for most of us Dolce and Gabbana is a bit more accessible than that.