MILAN — Irina Shayk’s grand tour has touched down in Naples. After a quick stop at the Venice Film Festival earlier this week — where she grabbed the attention and camera flashes wearing archival Givenchy and Dolce & Gabbana looks on the red carpet — the top model headed to the Dolce & Gabbana Beauty event on Tuesday to celebrate “Your Devotion Eau De Parfum Intense,” the latest olfactory installment of the brand’s Devotion fragrance franchise.
Covered in black lace that left little to the imagination, she was the guest of honor at a candle-lit dinner al fresco, along with Italian actor Michele Morrone, who stars next to her in the fragrance campaign and cinematic commercial filmed in Naples by Gordon von Steiner.
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The event celebrated the scent hitting global distribution this month, following an advanced release at Sephora at the end of June.
The positive feedback received from the early release boosted Gianluca Toniolo’s confidence. In a conversation with WWD ahead of the celebratory event, Dolce & Gabbana Beauty’s chief executive officer said the scent has generated around 4 million euros in sell out sales so far.
Available in 50- and 100-ml sizes at 135 euros and 182 euros, respectively, the fruity fragrance created by perfumer Olivier Cresp blends ingredients such as Sicilian melon and mandarin, orange blossom and gardenia with a base of milky vanilla from Madagascar, sandalwood and oakmoss.
It’s a lighter twist on the decisive gourmand connotation that defined the inaugural Devotion eau de parfum and further enlarges the scope — and audience — of the franchise, which was introduced in 2023 and that has since exceeded expectations sales-wise, resonating particularly well in the U.S.
“This franchise is getting closer and closer to the numbers made by Light Blue, which can be considered a pillar of perfumery at large and that accounted for half of our business [before 2023],” Toniolo said. Hence, launching the Devotion family was initially seen as a way to be not “so dependent from a single franchise [and] build something of equal value to enable the brand to continue to grow,” the executive said.
Since the inaugural scent, the Devotion family has been expanded, including the likes of Devotion for Men Parfum and My Devotion Eau de Parfum Intense released in September last year.
While the Light Blue family’s sales of the women’s and male’s scents are split equally, Toniolo said that in the Devotion franchise they currently account for 90 and 10 percent of sales, respectively. The executive revealed that the brand will launch a new men’s scent in the range in September 2027 in a bid to shift the balance and aim for the male fragrance to account for 40 percent of sales by the end of 2027.
As for the markets, Toniolo underscored that the performance in the U.S. is having a snowball effect in America at large, from Canada to Mexico and Brazil. The evolving tastes of the Middle Eastern clientele and their pivoting to experiment with lighter scents such as the Your Devotion and My Devotion is also benefiting the franchise.
To be sure, the CEO pointed to there not being any olfactory cannibalization within the range, nor with Light Blue and The One families, as among the keys to the line’s success. As reported, last year the brand revamped its bestselling Light Blue franchise and a new campaign featuring Theo James and Vittoria Ceretti, while earlier this year it relaunched The One for the inaugural scent’s 20th anniversary with fragrances featuring more intense formulations, updated packaging and a special campaign starring Madonna.
Conceived also as a way to draw a younger audience to the Devotion line, Your Devotion’s campaign starring Shayk mirrored the strategy. Toniolo explained that the brand zeroed in on the top model to succeed Katy Perry as a face of a Devotion female fragrance as Shayk not only has been affiliated with Dolce & Gabbana for a long time and previously appeared in its fashion campaigns, but she has already been featured in its makeup ads last year.
Makeup represents the second arm of the company’s three-pronged business. Debuted in October 2024 but already including more than 300 stock keeping units across eye, face and lip products, the category is growing at a steady pace with constant product launches, the latest of which is the My Lash Seduction mascara priced at 42 euros and hitting shelves starting this month.
Toniolo enthused about the makeup offering’s strategic positioning, which he described as “indie luxury” and placed halfway between the agility and performance of independent beauty brands and the standing and image of luxury names. “This positioning is what is enabling us to penetrate the market very quickly today,” he said.
For one, the partnership with Sephora was key for this segment, too. In April, the brand launched on the retailer’s e-commerce in the U.S., a market where it plans to be available in more than 100 Sephora physical stores by April 2027. Overall, Toniolo aims to almost double Dolce & Gabbana makeup’s current physical distribution to reach 2,000 doors by the end of 2026.
Also this month, the brand made its official foray into skin care with the release of the antiaging Ever Youth line encompassing a peptides cream, serum, eye serum and mask. So far, the category was represented by a collection that debuted last year and hinged on pre-makeup products aimed more at refining the complexion than addressing skin conditions.
Candidly acknowledging that as a fashion brand “we will never play a role as protagonists in skin care,” Toniolo underscored he sees this segment as instrumental in further enhancing the luxury positioning of the brand and recruiting consumers in the growing Asia-Pacific region, eventually redirecting them toward its fragrance and makeup offerings.
All these launches are poised to further propel the beauty business, which Dolce & Gabbana brought back in-house in 2022 after it was previously licensed to Shiseido, when it generated around 420 million euros in sales.
As reported, the firm ranked 40th in WWD Beauty Inc’s 2025 list of the top 100 beauty companies by sales, with sales surpassing the 1 billion euros threshold last year, up 14 percent versus 2024. Toniolo projected a further increase between 10 and 15 percent in 2026, as well.
“We are growing and we’re doing it sooner than we initially planned and expected,” said Toniolo, also highlighting how such results came within a challenging macroeconomic context. He credited different ingredients in the recipe of such a success, ranging from the consistency of the creative vision set by founders Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana and the intuition of CEO Alfonso Dolce of internalizing the beauty business, to speed in product launches and the ability to build a structure and a team encompassing 600 employees worldwide. The workforce is spread across subsidiaries in Dubai, Paris, Italy, Miami, Singapore, as well as a joint venture with Farlabo for the Spanish market.
In April, the firm opened a subsidiary in India, a country that will be among the focal points of its aggressive plan of direct retail rollout. This is part of its ongoing strategy of flanking stand-alone beauty stores to its wholesale distribution — which accounts for 95 percent of the business — and beauty corners housed in 30 of Dolce & Gabbana fashion boutiques worldwide.
To be sure, the brand recently opened its first beauty unit in India at Mall of India in Noida, which followed locations in Jakarta, Indonesia, last year and subsequent openings in Hong Kong, London, Dubai, Bahrain and Kuwait, among others.
The company signed an agreement with Apparel Group to develop more outposts in India and Middle East in the next three years. In particular, it plans to open 15 stand-alone stores in India — with five to six units bowing already in 2026 — and 20 outposts in the Gulf.
Prior to such a rollout, the company will focus on Brazil, with stores opening in São Paulo and Brasilia in November and January, respectively.
Overall, Toniolo aims to reach between 50 and 70 stand-alone beauty stores globally in the next three years, with this channel generating 5 percent of Dolce & Gabbana Beauty’s total sales.