Giorgio Armani, the doyen of Italian fashion, has accused two of his most illustrious rivals at Dolce & Gabbana of copying his work.
In an aside to reporters as he presented his Emporio Armani collection, the veteran designer said Stefano Gabbana and his partner, Domenico Dolce, had plagiarised one of his designs for a pair of trousers.
Corriere della Sera newspaper quoted Armani as saying: "They copied some trousers from the last [Armani] collection."
He said that Dolce & Gabbana had used the design under suspicion 16 times when they showed their own collection on Friday.
"I would understand if they were nobodies. But honestly!" he said
The remark was rubbished in a statement from Dolce & Gabbana: "Surely we still have much to learn," they said. "But definitely not from him."
Although top fashion designers frequently complain of having their designs appropriated in Neapolitan sweatshops and by producers in the developing world, it is highly unusual for a designer with a global reputation to point a finger at his peers.
The paper said Leo Dell'Orco, Armani's right-hand man, had shown reporters photographs of a pair of quilted trousers that were among the pivotal designs in the Dolce & Gabbana collection, together with images of one of his own creations from last year's Armani show.
Sicilian-born Dolce and his partner said they were sorry to hear of the controversy. "Stylistically, the Armani style is not, and has never been, an inspiration source for us and we stopped seeing his fashion shows years ago."
The two designers, who have been called the Gilbert and George of fashion, said they had made a fortune by creating a style of their own that was "strongly tied to Sicily and its traditions" yet had become "globally recognised".
The statement nevertheless concluded on a cryptic note: "As Picasso used to say, copying from others is inevitable. But copying from oneself leads to sterility."
