Come mangiare un cannolo con le bacchette

A story that begins with a pair of chopsticks, pizza, spaghetti and a cannolo and comes towards its close with models waiting at a partially abandoned dress rehearsal, the saga of the Dolce & Gabbana ‘The Great Show’ is one of digitisation and conflictual interactions between an international luxury fashion brand, Chinese and international media, and consumers. This paper aims to explore these conflicts. Adopting Bourdieu’s field theory, it interprets the interactions between actors involved in the development of the incident. By analysing the timeline of events and actors’ framing, it explains how consumers, social media influencers, established media, and the brand negotiated variant forms of capital in the field of global luxury fashion and its Chinese market. It proposes that the capital held by certain actors engaged in the global luxury fashion industry was converted during November 2018 and provides a framework for understanding these developments that may be translated to analyse similar events.

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