Fashion Without Frontiers

By JAY COCKS

Pass the smelling salts: Valentino has deserted Italy for France. And that's not all. Romeo Gigli will take his pseudo-cerebral fashions out of Milan and plunk them down in the middle of the Paris runways. Desertion! Infamy! Tribal politics! Frets Beppe Modenese, program organizer of the just concluded Milan fashion week: "Both Valentino and Gigli have done big damage to the Italian fashion image."

So have their clothes, but then that is a matter of taste. By choosing to absent themselves from their home turf, Valentino and Gigli have sent the kind % of political signal that is beyond debate: Paris is fashion central, and Milan is just a big backyard. This is not news to the French, of course, who responded to the story of the traveling Italians with the kind of equanimity that barely skirts smugness. "Paris is still No. 1 in fashion," says Jacques Mouclier, president of the Chambre Syndicale, which sponsors the twice-yearly ready-to-wear fashion shows held in the jammed courtyard of the Louvre. "The Italians have come because they've realized they can't do without us. The Milan ready-to-wear draws far fewer journalists than the shows in Paris. Need I say more?"

Perhaps not. Gigli and Valentino have already said plenty. "I don't believe in frontiers," reflects Gigli. Explains Carla Sozzani, a business associate of the designer's: "Romeo's all for 1992 and a united Europe." Valentino has announced some similar geopolitical aims. "I am going to Paris as an Italian designer to speak for Italy," he says. "I will never betray my country, but I need the challenge to do better." Elaborates Giancarlo Giammetti, Valentino's partner: "Rome is becoming a very provincial market, and it's simply not stimulating the creator."

The Creator may have finished his big job in six days, but Giammetti's creator works full time to fuel his fashion empire (estimated wholesale haul for 1989: $600 million), and has for some time been trying to seem like an internationalist. Valentino's ready-to-wear has been on view in Paris for the past 14 years without attracting a commotion. Gigli is looking for an imprimatur, separating himself from the excellent elegances of Milan in favor of the more experimental company in Paris. The intrepid Japanese designers show their stuff in Paris; so do the haut trendies like Jean-Paul Gaultier and Claude Montana. The company is faster there than in Milan, where Giorgio Armani, Italy's premier talent, casts a very long shadow indeed. "Presumptuous," is the way Armani characterizes Gigli's move, adding, "He may want to be international, but his move is premature."

Milan has been bucking Paris and all its traditions for over a decade, but the City of Light still holds a clear lead. Milan staked its claim in a time of flux, when the fashion establishment, still shell-shocked by the '60s, was not quite so restrictive. Italy came on with a rush of fresh talent: dazzling designers (like the Missonis), some fine hands (like Gianfranco Ferre) and some naughty boys (like Gianni Versace). But, in Armani, it produced just a | single world beater. Paris, on the other hand, can still offer a wider spectrum: sumptuous Saint Laurent, engaging Lagerfeld, generative Miyake, fast-flash Gaultier, ebullient Patrick Kelly. As ever, it is center stage, the arena on which designers want most to play, especially if they are coming on (like Gigli) or consolidating (like Valentino).

There was also some suggestion around the Milan shows last week that Gigli had left in a bit of a huff, having lost a wrangle over a choice scheduling spot to Ferre, whose revenues ($390 million in 1988) currently carry a good deal more clout than Gigli's (under $10 million). "One day I just woke up and thought I'd like to show in Paris," shrugs Gigli, perhaps forgetting that Paris, for other Italian designers (like Simonetta), turned into a nightmare that left them disenfranchised, with no singular creative identity. "I shouldn't yet take all this for more than a one-season wonder," said Suzy Menkes, the savvy fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune. "All designers are prima donnas to some extent, and I expect Gigli just wanted to teach the Milanese organizers a lesson."

For his part, Valentino was playing the diplomat. "It's a great joy for me to show in Paris," he said. "I'll certainly still show in Rome, but couture is my metier, and I learned it in Paris. But I always keep my Italian accent when speaking French, and so do my clothes." By the time some State Department of Fashion has worked out all the coded signals and careful contradictions in that dispatch, the dust will have settled. There is always a lot of it around during fashion season anyway, especially when the clothes aren't good enough to clear the air.

With reporting by Regan Charles/Paris