Battle of the catwalks update: Milan and Paris refuse to budge
International fashion schism is the trend to bet on for 2012, after the Italian Camera Nazionale della Moda today determined to stick to a plan that will see its fashion week next September clash with those of both New York and London.
At a meeting of Italy's most influential fashion houses in Milan this morning, the decision to maintain its collision-course calendar was unanimous. "We will not move the days," said a source: "This is not our fault."
"Let the best one win," Mario Boselli, head of the Camera, said afterwards: "Italian designers unanimously agreed on the schedule from the smallest brand to the biggest. They showed great solidarity and Italian pride."
Now only a humiliating volte-face by the Americans and British - in which they agree to change their dates to accommodate their Italian and French counterparts - can prevent editors, models and buyers alike from being forced to choose one city over the other at the spring/summer 2013 collections. More practically the media and buyers are likely to divide their teams to ensure attendance at clashing shows such as Ralph Lauren and Gucci, or Burberry and Dolce & Gabbana.
Yet a source in the Anglo/American bloc today insisted: "We thought Milan would back down. But if they want to go knuckle-to-knuckle, then we're ready."
So, as things now stand, New York fashion week will begin on September 13 next year, followed by Milan on September 19, London on September 21 and finally Paris on September 25.
Milan decided to go ahead with its controversial calendar (that sees it run concurrently with two days of New York and four days of London fashion weeks) despite a last minute plea from its British and American counterparts.
In a letter to Italy's most powerful fashion houses sent earlier this week, Diane von Furstenberg and Harold Tillman - the heads of New York's and London's fashion syndicates - asked them to vote down a clash that "threatens to throw the co-operation between all capitals and the global fashion calendar out of balance".
Yet the Italians today not only rejected this plea, but according to sources they refute any suggestion that they are the ones are at fault for this clash. The American and British have suggested that Milan's Camera Nazionale della Moda declared its start date in contravention of a 2008 agreement decreeing that the annual round of consecutive fashion weeks - New York, London, Milan and finally Paris - would start every year on the second Thursday in September. This was designed to allow the Americans to avoid working on one of their rare public holidays, Labor Day.
Yet a source in Italy today said: " We do not want to suddenly move our dates. And New York have been aware of them since March 2010."
In a bullish interview with the BBC yesterday, Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman declared she is confident that even should London designers such as Burberry, Jonathan Saunders, and Aquascutum be forced to show simultaneously to Giorgio Armani, Prada or Gucci it will be the Italians who lose out.
Shulman said: "right now, London is probably one of the biggest fashion capitals in the world, and there would be no way that people wouldn't choose to come to London rather than Milan."
In a statement this afternoon, the British Fashion Council said: "We have, and continue to recieve incredible support from both international and domestic media and retailers to retain the existing agreement."
This despite the fact that it is the Italians, (and the French with whom they are closely aligned), who are the richest source of the advertising revenues that sustain the magazine industry and the products that sustain the retail industry.
This will not help Christopher Kane, for the Dalston-based designer will have somehow to find a way to be in London (where he shows his main line) and Milan (where he shows Versus) at almost precisely the same time. Kane is British fashion's pre-eminent boy genius, but being in two places at once?
