Milan Fashion Week to Clash with London and New York

It's official!

The catwalk showdown wages on! This morning, Mario Boselli, the head of Milan's Camera Nazionale della Moda, met with major Italian design houses to decide the fate of the Spring 2013 Milan Fashion Week, amid scheduling conflicts with London and New York. The consensus? Milan refused to budge on its original September 19 to 25 show dates, overlapping two days with New York and four with London.
“Italian designers unanimously agreed on the schedule, from the smallest brand to the biggest. They showed great solidarity and Italian pride," Boselli declared.
As previously reported, the CFDA scheduled New York's Spring 2013 Fashion Week to run September 13 to 20 and London followed suit with dates running from September 21 to 25. CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg and CEO Steven Kolb explained their decision yesterday in a memo referencing the 2008 "Second Thursday Pact," wherein they claim the CFDA, BFC, Chambre Syndicale, and Camera Nazionale della Moda made an agreement to begin New York's Fashion Week the second Thursday of every September. This was set up so Fashion Week wouldn't coincide with Labor Day, but Milan is claiming that they won't have enough time to manufacture and ship the Spring 2013 collections to retail stores.
The CFDA memo states: "When we started together at CFDA, the members and the American fashion industry asked us to stabilize the dates of New York's Fashion Week, which were being pushed back earlier each year. Given the international schedule, this was no easy accomplishment—but we were successful." Later, DvF and Kolb wrote, "Milan is claiming the agreement was for three years only. This is not the case; the agreed-to schedule was always meant to be a long-term/permanent one."
Earlier this week, Condé Nast International chairman Jonathan Newhouse joined Team New York with a letter to Boselli. "[Vogue editors] like the schedule the way it is presently organized. We at Condé Nast do not want the schedule to be changed. We very much oppose moving the Milan shows earlier so that they overlap or conflict with the London fashion shows—or with the New York fashion shows or those of any market...[Vogue editors] will not under any circumstances abandon the London or New York shows if the Milan shows are moved earlier."
"We will not move the days," reasserted Boselli this morning. "This is not our fault. Let the best one win."