Italian fashion houses lobby for government bailout as crisis hits couture sales

Everyone in Italy's clothing industry is begging for state aid but some of the loudest cries for help are coming from the exclusive haute couture segment known more for sequinned extravagance than humble pleas.
Rome's couturiers - who included the likes of Valentino and Roberto Capucci in their heyday - are struggling as even the super-rich cut back on the custom-fitted, hand-sewn frocks that can easily cost €10 000 (R127 500) or more.
Couturiers face strong competition in their bid for aid as a growing list of players in Italy's €66 billion fashion sector extend open palms amid a deepening recession.
Italy has pledged $1.7 billion (R17.3 billion) in aid to car makers and more than $15 billion for banks. The fashion sector is lining up in hopes of being next, pointing to a four percent slide in sales in 2008 and forecasts of a five percent fall in 2009.
At the high end Gattinoni, one of Rome's oldest fashion houses, says its haute couture sales slid 40 percent in 2008 to prompt the first loss in its 62-year history, while organisers of February's Rome High Fashion week say the crisis forced three stylists to abandon plans to participate.
"Until about two years ago you could just about maintain an atelier but the crisis has dealt us the final blow," said Gattinoni chairman Stefano Dominella.
He rejects arguments that the luxurious world of haute couture is an unlikely candidate for state support.
Rome's couture scene has shrunk to a handful of houses like his and it lacks the glamour of Paris but he said the roots of Italian fashion lay in its ateliers, which were veritable "museums" housing archives of sketches and time-honoured techniques.
"We are the smallest and the easiest to rescue," he argued, citing sales of €1-2 million a year for most couturiers. "If you had to choose between saving a museum and saving a fashion chain outlet, which one would you choose?"
With the help of fashion dynasty member Santo Versace, who is also a legislator in the ruling coalition, Dominella has begun lobbying the government for 30 percent tax breaks.
Miffed that fashion was recently overlooked for aid in favour of the appliance and furniture industries, the head of fashion lobby Sistema Moda Italia told senators in February that Italy's clothing sector risked "going to pieces".
Already weighed down by the world's third-largest debt pile, Italy's government was unlikely to favour haute couture amid the competing demands for aid, said Armando Branchini, the head of fashion consulting firm InterCorporate.
"If having culture, craftsmanship and tradition is the reason to get aid, then that would be true for 99 percent of Italian consumer goods. Frankly, an intervention for haute couture in Italy would be impossible and meaningless."

Haute couture represented only a fraction of Italy's clothing sector, he said, and the government would be more likely to consider help for the broader textile and fashion industry instead.
While they wait for the government to act, Roman couturiers are busy looking at other avenues to drum up business.
Dominella, for example, suggests opening up the ateliers to tourists or including couture presentations in travel packages offered by luxury tour operators.
Sylvio Giardina of the Rome-based Grimaldi Giardina couture duo favours state aid but says that just having the sector overseen by Italy's culture ministry rather than the tourism portfolio would help.
"Fashion is often considered something trivial but in reality it maintains historic values and ancient craftsmanship," said Giardina, who estimates that sales fell 40 percent in 2008 after a sharp slowdown in the final four months.
"If the artisans doing it disappear so will high fashion."
One stylist who is already adapting to the new reality in the couture world is Sicilian designer Marella Fererra, who says the demand is now for couture that is cost effective.
"I'm still dressing the same families, but instead of ordering outfits for €25 000 as they once did, now they want to spend €7 000-10 000," she said.
According to Fererra the crisis is simply laying bare a systemic change in Italian haute couture: costs have spiralled, infrastructural support has withered and orders for €3 000 dresses are replacing those for €50 000 stunners.
She is tailoring her offerings to lower-priced outfits, which is a far cry from when she started as a couturier 16 years ago, when fashion industry chief Giuseppe Della Schiava would gift new designers with fabric from his textiles business and feature them in his Italian Harper's Bazaar magazine, Fererra said.
"It was a system that worked for everybody."
But other fashion maestros scoff at the idea of wholesale change to the couture business.
Renato Balestra, a stalwart of Rome haute couture, said that even though his sales had felt the pinch he had little faith in government aid and saw no point in compromising on standards or surrendering to gloom.
"If you want to do a collection of haute couture then you have to do it as haute couture," Balestra said. "You can't go live in a cave just because there's a crisis."