CAN MILAN REDISCOVER ITSMOJOASAN INDUSTRY CAPITAL?

I beg your pardon if I get slightly ticked off when the topic of f ashion week arises, but whenever I see how irrelevant Milan is on the verge of becoming to the general fashion conversation – with its calendar getting thin and its offer growing pale, save for a few exceptions – I can’t help making comparisons with its glorious past. I know, nostalgia is a paralysing feeling: looking back, in anger or despair, is the best way not to move forward.

Yet there is a lesson that can, and must, be taken from the glories of such a relatively recent history. This lesson is both a simple and effective one: that taking one’s destiny into one’s own hands is the only way to succeed. Or at least attempt to succeed. After all, failure is always just around the corner, but it tastes a bit less bitter when it comes after giving things a stubborn try.

I think the problem here is mainly a matter of mentality – one that deeply characterises contemporary Italians as a population.Those who created the success stories that took our creativity, knowledge and wit around the world had different mindsets from the Italians of today.

The generation that came right after World War II, until the late ’60s, had a genuine urge to build something relevant from scratch, rather than wait for someone to guide them to do so. The succeeding generations, instead, got stuck in a rather passive mindset of perpetually waiting for something to happen. No matter how old you are, well past the age of consent, you are still the “son of ”, the “daughter of ” and, most of all, a child with no right to have a voice. In other words, we wait for a bigger entity to solve our problems for us – reddito di cittadinanza, anyone? That’s apparent in fashion. It’s easy to blame the debacle of Milan Fashion Week on the way the Camera della Moda operates: the lack of coordination in its actions, and the lack of cooperation among houses in the name of the greater cause of Italian fashion, is before everybody’s eyes.

The silly management of fresh talents is equally plain to see, with new names seemingly chosen at random to fill gaps in the calendar. A vigorous curation of up-andcoming fashion creators would help foster some relevant change, that’s for sure, but it is the spirit that needs to be prompted. What Milan needs in fact is a call to action, boosted by a vigorous dose of self-esteem. Self-deprecation will only drive the city’s much-needed relevance further away. Being relevant, today more than ever, is about how you say things, rather than what you say. It’s time to act, fearlessly and boldly, to take the stage with bravado, before fear eats away the soul of Italian fashion for good.