Living: Fashion Without Frontiers

Two top Italian designers defect to France

Pass the smelling salts: Valentino has deserted Italy for France. And that's not all. Romeo Gigli will take his pseudo-cerebral fashions out of Milan and plunk them down in the middle of the Paris runways. Desertion! Infamy! Tribal politics! Frets Beppe Modenese, program organizer of the just concluded Milan fashion week: "Both Valentino and Gigli have done big damage to the Italian fashion image."

So have their clothes, but then that is a matter of taste. By choosing to absent themselves from their home turf, Valentino and Gigli have sent the kind % of political signal that is beyond debate: Paris...

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