FASHION

DITA PURSUES GLOBAL DOMINANCE WITH EPILUXURY

OCTOBER 7, 2019

WORDS

by KRISTOPHER FRASER

PHOTOGRAPHY

COURTESY of PURPLE PR

Dita is continuing its quest to be one of the biggest major forces in luxury with the launch of Epiluxury, a new concept that is the brainchild of their creative team. Dita has sought to create a new category of luxury beginning with their signature eyewear and expanding rapidly to skincare, fragrance, watches, hotels and more. Dita-Epiluxury was the first product to be launched in this new segment of luxury with eyewear styles ranging from $1800 to $4500. Epiluxury wasn’t just created to make more expensive eyewear either.

“It’s hard to identify just one sphere of innovation,” said Dustin Arnold, group creative director of Dita Group. “Epiluxury was created to address a problem in a wider marketplace. It was created in response to a luxury market that over the years has become so diluted that the term ‘luxury’ has lost all meaning. If you put a luxury brands logo on a dog bowl it’s suddenly considered luxury, it makes no sense. It’s a crazy idea but Epiluxury’s intent is to create a segment of product above luxury.” The root word of the name “EPI” is the Greek root word for “ABOVE”. Epi-Luxury translated literally means ABOVE-LUXURY. The aim of the new concept is to set a new standard for excellence.

The creative team defined five pillars, or tenets, that every product needs to excel in, in order to be considered Epiluxury. These were used in order to pressure test if they were on the right track in designing a product that is truly worthy of the title. It wasn’t easy and took them about four years to create something that met their own self-imposed standards.

DITA-EPILUXURY

DITA Epiluxury

Dita-Epiluxury

DITA Epiluxury

Dita-Epiluxury

DITA Epiluxury

DITA Epiluxury

Dita-Epiluxury

The five tenets include functional performance, engineering technology, artisan craftsmanship, timeless design, and personal exclusivity. To come up with the five pillar criteria to categorize Epiluxury products the creative team looked at the history of luxury goods and what they stood for, then at the current marketplace. These were areas they felt had both a historical and contemporary relevance and can span across time and a multitude of products.

Epiluxury and Dita are actually setup as two different organizations. “The big idea for Epiluxury is to define a new market segment above-luxury,” Arnold said. “This is about partnering with some of the best in their chosen field and co-creating products that are so radical, other companies would shy away from them. Dita-Epiluxury is the eyewear expression or eyewear partnership of Epiluxury. We started with eyewear because it’s where our expertise lies, literally ‘partnering’ with ourselves. The strategy with Dita-Epiluxury was to create a case study to act as proof of concept in order to recruit and partner with other experts in different fields (skincare, perfume, hospitality) to create the next expression of Epiluxury. In the end, Epiluxury is a rallying cry for brands and creators to step up their game and reclaim their industry.”

Arnold sees the customer for this collection as, “Simply someone who wants the best. It’s for a client who is passionate about excellence. With Dita-Epiluxury we took all the ideas for Dita that demanded an excess of time, R&D and expense to create this line of products. The Epiluxury line is for someone who resonates with the qualities of the five tenets of Epiluxury.”

Products like this typically have no specific target regional market either. Buyers for items like these tend to be so individual, although the market for luxury goods this high-end is typically very narrow, but there is a client in the marketplace for it. The products are also all limited-edition, meaning the fashion and luxury collectors will have their eyes set on them. There are two levels of product, flagship and core collection. All Dita-Epiluxury frames are hand numbered, with Core collection pieces limited to 500 items per color and the Flagship items limited to 200 pieces per color.

Other offerings, such as the skincare line, are another three to four years in the making. As Arnold puts it, “There’s a lot of failure when you’re trying to innovate.” However, in the spirit of collaboration they are inviting those who want to be part of the conversation and the rallying cry to elevate luxury goods again to join them. “Our north star is to continue to fulfill the challenge of the five pillars of Epiluxury," he said. "It means breaking through some boundaries. There have been many books written critiquing the state of the luxury industry, we are just trying break through and do something about it. This is our rally cry not only for the luxury industry, but for other creators to join us and we invite them to share why they would like to be a part of this at epiluxury.com.”