First Italian victims of the fashion crisis |

New York Fashion Week kicks off this week, but the casualties of the fashion industry are already being counted. Catwalks will be drastically reduced and many designers opted or will be opting for website shows, videos, installations and fashion presentations. Among the fashion designers who recently announced they will be hosting smaller showcases or parties there are also Vera Wang, Betsey Johnson, Carmen Marc Valvo and Donna Karan. But while American designers hope Michelle Obama will somehow support them with her style choices, in Italy things are rather worrying.

In more recent years Italian fashion struggled to survive the war of the fake accessories coming in from China, but now the battle has moved on and the "Made in Italy" is fighting against an international enemy, global crisis.

The Ittierre company, subsidiary of the IT Holding group, and licensing unit for various diffusion luxury labels including Just Cavalli, VJC Versace, Versace Sport, C’N’C Costume National and Galliano, has recently filed for bankruptcy protection. The request for bankruptcy protection came after IT Holding missed a loan payment in October and failed to find funding to enable it to continue trading.

Apparently, though, also the IT Holding group is in a bad financial situation and the bankruptcy order may be extended to the whole company which also owns the Gianfranco Ferré brand. If the entire company files for the “amministrazione straordinaria” (equivalent for bankruptcy protection) the Ferré brand might be sold. But while Mario Boselli, Chairman of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (National Chamber for Italian Fashion) reassured people working in the fashion industry, stating that Italy won't lose Ferré and while in a recently issued statement the IT Holding group said that the move will allow Ittierre to be restructured and continue in business, you naturally wonder what will happen next.

As the shares of the company were suspended from Milan’s stock exchange, shareholders were rather concerned, but trade unions were even more worried. The IT Holding group is in fact very important for the whole Italian fashion industry as it owns factories all over Italy, from Molise and Tuscany to Emilia Romagna and Lombardia.

But IT Holding is not the only company which is going through a major crisis: in January designer Roberto Cavalli agreed to sell a 20% stake of his company to Italian private equity fund Clessidra, seeing it as the first step to get out of the financial crisis.

As the IT Holding saga goes on and the group considers the availability of the necessary financial resources and the continuity of its license agreements, we should maybe stop and think: we’re only in the second week of February and the main fashion weeks for the next season haven't started yet, but there are already quite a few casualties in the industry. The future doesn't look rosy: London-based German designer Markus Lupfer recently told me that the next couple of seasons will be very tough and that there will be a sort of "survival of the fittest" test, while young American stylist and designer Brett Bailey explained me that while the recession has already affected the fashion industry and will continue to do so, the worst thing is that, with sales down, many young designers, at least those without substantial backing, may not survive the market.

Universities and colleges produce every year many graduates in fashion design and creative arts, but, I wonder, will there be enough jobs for them once they graduate if these industries are being so badly affected? For one story of success à la Gareth Pugh, there are five stories of starving designers or of young companies/labels going bankrupt. When I first heard about the problems at Ittierre I thought about Ferré's new creative duo, Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi who, after leaving 6267, barely enjoyed one season of success at Ferré, before seeing the company they're currently working with being swallowed by a major crisis.

There is a lot of excitement about the next fashion weeks, but this is maybe the right time for the fast-changing fashion industry to stop and ponder a bit about the situation, as the real casualties of the economic downturn in this case won't be rich designers and overpaid managers, but young and talented designers and ordinary people employed in factories working for big companies. This, at the end of the day, is probably the highest price the fashion industry will pay during the financial crisis.