The Milan Fashion Week has started. A “liquid” edition – as he defined it the president of the Chamber of Fashion Carlo Capasa -, as capable as possible of adapting, without obligations and rigidities, to the needs of the various brands to find the correct way to tell their story: an interesting moment, in which everyone is looking for the road towards authenticity in an extremely fluid way”. And perhaps also the last one with the current formula, given that Capasa himself revealed: "We have put forward a proposal: to become a man and a woman in June-July, not necessarily together".
Meanwhile, the fashion week has begun without disruption for the city of Milan, given that today the taxi drivers' wildcat strike has returned, who stopped for 6 days, returning to service regularly with the start of the event which includes the presentation of 174 collections spread over six days (from today to 27 February), with 70 fashion shows, 88 presentations, 37 events. It is above all with the Women's collection that Milan launches the challenge in Paris: women's fashion in fact pushes the system, with a 2016% turnover in 2,3, against 1,9% in the sector and 0,9% in the men's sector. The great Italian brands performed excellently also on the stock markets: in Milan Ferragamo gained 2016% in 23,6, Cucinelli 32,9%, in Hong Kong Prada 28,5%.
Among the international new entries, the fashion show of the Vionnet brand for the first time in the official calendar. And then the debut of Xu Zhi, the designer hosted by Giorgio Armani in his Armani / Teatro. Speaking of Armani, the Foundation has become a partner of the group: for now, a symbolic 0,1% of the group has been shot, which has a turnover of 2,6 billion in revenues. The rest remains in the hands of the founder Giorgio, but the goal for the future is to create an automatic pre-emption mechanism for the Foundation, so that "the governance structures of the group remain stable, respectful and consistent with certain principles". Armani himself explained.
As always, the headquarters of Milano Moda Donna will be the Unicredit Pavilion under the skyscrapers of Porta Nuova, where the Fashion Hub Market presents 15 other emerging brands from all over the world. The exhibition that accompanies the fashion shows is also set up here, in this case «Portraits» by Maurizio Galimberti, photographs and installations that narrate fashion and cinema; to complete the exhibition, three lectio magistralis by Piero Gemelli, Toni Thorimbert and by Galimberti himself. However, there are also new locations: in addition to the thousand spaces around the city, the very central Hall of the Caryatids of Palazzo Reale the Cavallerizze Space of the National Museum of Science and Technology is added, which will host fashion shows and presentations.
But fashion week is not just about luxury and fashion shows. Behind it are important companies, for which the fashion week represents one of the milestones in their annual financial strategy. Mediobanca has carried out a study which puts a I compare the flagships of Made in Italy fashion with their traditional French rivals. And so it turns out that our companies are more capitalized than the French, have fewer debts and more liquidity. On the other hand, however, the fashion system of France, which is growing more or less like that of Italy, but is much larger in size.
The aggregate turnover of the top 15 luxury companies beyond the Alps in 2015 was 70,1 billion euros (3,3% of GDP), compared to 30,3 billion in 2015 for the Italians. A striking example is represented by the colossus Christian Dior-Lvmh which, boasting a 2015 turnover of around 35 billion, single-handedly beat the top fifteen Italian luxury companies. The Mediobanca analyst, Nadia Portioli, however specified that without considering wines and other products, the Dior-Lvmh fashion and luxury sector alone would amount to 11,7 billion euros, slightly above the 11,5. XNUMX billion of Kering, the second French group which also controls the Italian brand Gucci.
