Milan fashion week opens its doors and does so with good news for one of the most important sectors of Made in Italy: Italian fashion, especially women's fashion, has resumed its run abroad. To quantify it exactly are the data from Smi-Sistema moda Italia and Istat for the first five months of 2015, when the export of Italian womenswear registered a +5,2%, while the import recorded an increase of 12,9%, for a trade surplus of 1,2 billion euro.
A geographical analysis within the borders of the European Union does not escape the growth of exports of Italian manufacturing companies in the direction of French maisons, transactions up by 1,8% to 349 million euros. Second place of reference is Germany, up 9,3% for 311 million euro, while direct sales grew by double digits in the United Kingdom (+12,1%) and in Spain (+19,9%). Switzerland, in its role as a logistic-commercial platform, marks a -8,5% to 188 million euros, preceding Russia which recorded the most visible drop to 184 million (-33,4%), penalized by sanctions following the Ukrainian conflict.
But the exploit is recorded above all overseas, thanks above all to the weak euro which has made more than one Italian company breathe a sigh of relief, not only in the fashion sector: in fact, growth on the American market is strengthened, which consolidates as third world destination and first non-EU rising to 256 million euros (+27,4%). Japan (+5,1%) is back in progress, while Hong Kong (+30,8%) and China (+30,4%) confirm the stability of the high-end segment with respect to the instability of Asian price lists, even if the real test for these squares will be the last quarter of the year.
The audience to which the Italian women's fashion, a segment which, with revenues of 12,5 billion euros recorded in 2014, up 2,5% on 2013, absorbs 24% of the total turnover of made in Italy textile-fashion, is therefore increasingly cosmopolitan. In 2014, in fact, foreign sales rose by 4,7% to 7,3 billion euros and came to account for 59% of sector revenues. The predictions of Promethea and from Study Center of Confindustria presented during the launch of the project Exporting la Dolce Vita, in which he also takes part Italian Fashion System (Smi), have instead drawn up estimates for the next few years. And they are even more rosy: theexport of Italian fashion will grow by 37,4% in emerging countries until 2020, and already 2016 will be the year of redemption of the Russia, after the difficult months of sanctions due to the war in Ukraine. The made in Italy should then start to grow again in Moscow starting from 2017, thanks to the Special project Russia wanted by Ice, Come on e Ministry of Economic Development: despite everything, it remains today the third European market after France and Germany.
In line with the trends described so far, the analysis of the Chamber of Commerce of Milan relating to the second quarter of the year, also based on Istat data: the export of Lombard fashion companies has risen to 6 billion euros, up 2% compared to the same period of 2014. In spite of the sharp growth in imports (+11,6% to 4,6 billion euro), the trade balance remains positive by approximately 1,4 billion euro. Europe, the leading market, suffered a drop of 6,7%, offset by the performances of Asia (+19,8%) and the Americas (+13%). Lombardy currently represents almost a quarter of national fashion exports. The Lombard capital is responsible for half of regional exports (3 billion in the first half of 2015), followed by the cities of Como (770 million euros), Varese (475 million euros) and Bergamo (459 million euros).
