MILAN — The coming year is a big one for Italy, and its fashion capital, Milan in particular. The city is hosting the Universal Exposition, which is expected to draw millions of visitors between May and the end of October.
With exports on the minds of many fashion trade show executives, buyers and exhibitors, they’re eagerly hitching their wagons to Expo in a bid to revitalize business.
Expo “forces us to focus increasingly on international markets and seek new paths to kick-start the economy,” said Cleto Sagripanti, president of both the biannual The Micam show and footwear trade association Assocalzaturifici. With about 85 percent of Italy’s footwear sold to foreign markets, “export has always represented a driving force,” he said.
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Micam suffered an overall dip in attendance this year, which Sagripanti attributed largely to the decrease in Russian and Ukrainian visitors, due to political unrest in Eastern Europe. At Micam’s most recent edition, which kicked off Aug. 31, the fair registered 34,176 visitors, down from 38,621 the previous year. Still, Sagripanti noted that of the show’s 1,557 exhibitors, 617 were foreign, and Micam is relentless in its pursuit of international attendees, from Europe, the Far East and the U.S., especially.
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Going forward, Micam aims to flesh out its Shanghai edition that debuted in 2013, while evaluating similar ventures in other countries, Sagripanti said.
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Exports are the bread-and-butter of the Italian eyewear industry, too, accounting for 80 percent of Italy’s eyewear production, said Mido president Cirillo Marcolin. Mido hit an attendance record of 45,000 visitors, 25,000 of whom were from outside Italy, last March, and Marcolin said the total value of Italian eyewear exports was soon expected to surpass 3 billion euros, or about $3.75 billion at current exchange.
“Exports are going very well in Europe, with significant increases in France and Germany, which are very demanding and mature markets, and there is improvement in the U.S. market,” where Italian eyewear possesses a certain cool factor among consumers, Marcolin added.
Mido will maintain its Design Lab, Fashion District, Lenses, Mido Tech and FAiR East Pavilion areas next year, however it is also developing a new LabAcademy space inside the Design Lab that will host a specially selected group of emerging designers at the fair for the first time. In addition, Mido is moving its booths closer to the nearest metro station to improve access and upgrading its online presence with a weekly Web magazine called WMIDO.
Pitti Immagine chief executive officer Raffaello Napoleone said 2014 was a “positive” year for all of Pitti’s fairs, especially the June edition of Pitti Uomo that coincided with the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Florentine Center for Italian Fashion.
“This year was a kind of U-turn [in Italy], as numbers were up all around,” he said, noting Italy had increased its fashion exports in countries such as France, Germany and the U.S. Children’s wear continues to import more than export in Italy, Napoleone added, although he said that is changing as Italian children’s wear brands are resolutely chasing foreign business.
Looking at the upcoming year, Napoleone said Pitti had received a record number of requests to exhibit at the January edition of Pitti Uomo, where Marni and Hood by Air are the featured guest maisons. This is suggestive, he indicated, of small- and medium-sized firms’ realization that exports are their ticket to survival. Pitti’s Web portal, e-Pitti, has also seen page views rise.
“I’m sensing more and more that the importance of a fair is connected to its additional services and resources,” Napoleone said.
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Fiera Milano’s biannual Milano Prêt-à-Porter, or MIPAP, hosted 20 more brands in September than during the same period in 2013, said exhibition manager Emanuela Forlin, noting that the fair had also seen an increase in the numbers of buyers present.
Similarly, Fiera Milano’s Sposaitalia Collezioni show, focused on bridal, saw a 7 percent on-year increase in buyers, with 7,273 in attendance in May.
“Our strategy is supported by a visiting buyers program organized in collaboration with ITA,” the Italian Trade Agency, said Forlin, adding the partnership would continue in 2015.
She also said that although Russia, a crucial market for MIPAP and Sposaitalia, had imported fewer Italian products this year than previously, “Russians are still very interested in fashion Made in Italy and we want to keep working on this market.”
Forlin said in spite of Italy’s wan economy, some homegrown labels were choosing to return to local fairs, which she expected would be a trend in 2015 as businesses seek to capitalize on Expo.
Biannual high-end, niche fair White bumped up buyers’ attendance in September by 18 percent on-year, a real “boom” according to the show’s president, Massimiliano Bizzi. Products on display spanned from contemporary ready-to-wear to accessories, fragrance to eyewear, and also jewelry, a category the show will expand next year.
“The greatest influx of buyers is from Japan, [South] Korea and Northern Europe,” said Bizzi, citing Germany, Holland and Belgium.
He also said there was an uptick in buyers from American department stores, and, echoing Forlin, “we are also seeing a comeback of the Italian market.”
“In terms of long-term projects, we have some in store for the Web and also to make our show more international,” he added. “We don’t exclude the possibility of entering new countries.”
The next edition of the mega textile fair Milano Unica is set for Feb. 4. The most recent edition in September featured 410 exhibitors and 21,800 visitors, a 6.55 percent increase over the previous year. The exhibition recorded a significant swell in foreign attendance, especially from India, Japan, Turkey, Holland, the U.S. and Spain.
Angelo Uslenghi, Milano Unica’s creative team coordinator, in a spring 2016 trend presentation last week, said while Italy has a rich artistic heritage, companies should be more daring and channel Salvador Dalì, who once said, “I prefer to remember the future.”
Under a “neomodernist” umbrella, the two major trends Uslenghi proposed for the coming season were Designed Simplicity, with a focus on creamy nude and mineral tones; a range of earthy, grainy textures; lustrous fabrics and micro patterns, and Artistic Boldness, which underscored splashy primary colors, pop art-inspired jungle prints, fluorescent lettering and abstract motifs.