Italian Fashion Watch

Yesterday an interesting piece of news came up. It looks like the Italian government is onto the big fashion companies, Dolce & Gabbana and Ferragamo who, uhm, forgot to pay their taxes.

How stupid is that? With a company cashing in tens or hundreds of millions of euros, you would expect that eventually, some people from up there will come to check you out and see how well you’re doing and claim their share.

Sounds really stupid, but there might actually be a good and logical explanation to this. You see, any company is always looking to pay less taxes. For large companies that operate on the international market, such as Dolce & Gabbana and Ferragamo, one option was to move their headquarters countries with lower taxes, such as Luxembourg and Holland.

They proceeded and set up companies in those two countries. The plan was good, except they didn’t really operate from there. Although their main office was far abroad, everything the two firms had to purchase in order to design and manufacture their products was done from Italy, and thus, the taxes were supposed to go to the Italian government and not Holland or Luxemburg.

In other words, they screwed up.

Dolce & Gabbana owe about 90 million euros and Ferragamo close to 20.

If they fail to pay that sum, Dolce and Gabbana may spend some time in prison. But I trust they’re gonna find a solution.

Giorgio Armani and Samsung finally completed their collaboration with the release of the new “Giorgio Armani Samsung Phone”, or the SGH-P520.

Being seen the first time last November, it was finally released officially this week.

As a fashion phone, it does not have extraordinary technical features. True, it does have a 3 Mega pixel camera and a fantastic frontal touch screen with vibration feedback that lets you know that you’ve pressed the right button.

The casing is made out of metal, with just the right weight, giving the phone a solid feel and also a reassurance that it won’t break when it accidentally fells on the ground.

The pictures taken with the camera look good on the phone, but a little blurry when on a larger screen. It also has no 3G.

Being designed in collaboration with a highly reputed fashion brand, the phone itself looks fantastic. Much better than what we’ve seen coming from the other fashion firms.

For more information, take a look at http://www.armanisamsungphone.com/

Dolce & Gabbana’s ready to wear fashion line, D&G, is planning to open six stores in the Middle East, beginning with outlets in Kuwait and Jeddah, this spring.

Stores in Doha and Bahrain will follow in the second half of this. Dubai and Riyadh outlets will be opened early next year.

The Milan-based fashion designer has been enjoying booming sales for its creations in the Middle East. The region now accounts for 5% of global sales for D&G.

The designer’s annual turnover is $2.12 billion, for all of its lines including Dolce & Gabbana fashion, eyewear and fragrances. At 5%, the Middle East market could have been worth as much as $110 million for the company over the past 12 months.

Friday night saw the fashion pack flocked to see Amy Winehouse (pictured above on her way to Paris) perform at one of the hottest events on the Paris schedule – the Fendi party.

Press, buyers and fans alike were desperately trying, and failing, left right and centre to get their hands on a coveted ticket. It should come as no surprise, however, that the enterprising Elle team had no trouble getting their way in to rub shoulders with the A-listers, so we can exclusively bring you all the gossip:

‘Fendi had turned a huge space at the back of their store into a red-lined club with a stage. Amy came on at 11.15pm and played for 45mins. The party was absolutely mad to get into and super packed - only about 250 people actually got in to see her, though there were more in the venue.

We followed the Olsen’s and their entourage through the kitchens…! Rihanna was dancing and singing along, Kanye West was there, as well as Bernard Arnault, Salma Hayek’s fiancée who owns PPR, and Karl Lagerfeld (sunglasses on, obviously)… Amy was wearing a D&G dress with a Fendi belt and looked so much better than of late, though she did say she had mumps???!

She did highlights from Back To Black and was talking a bit; she asked if fashion week was still on and if it actually lasted for a week…! Amazing…’

Recently, it’s been rumored that L’Oreal is in talks with Giorgio Armani’s Firm to purchase about 25% of its stocks.

It’s debatable about the impact of such a deal on the fashion industry, but a spokesman from Giorgio Armani denied the rumor: “There has been ongoing speculation about L’Oreal and others and no talks are going on at the moment.”

L’Oreal is already of partner with Giorgio Armani dealing with the distribution of perfumes, cosmetics and beauty products.

Armani himself mentioned in a November interview last year that L’Oreal could become more implicated in the Armani business, but that no talks were yet in progress.

We’ll see what happens in the future, and I’m sure it will an important event for te fashion industry, with Armani being arguably the most important designer today and L’Oreal the biggest cosmetics firm. Time will tell.