Italian Steps - Fashion - Cultural notes

Fact File

• Milan's Quadrilatero, square mile, is home to most of Italy's high-fashion houses and the source of billions of euros in annual revenue. The approximately 1km area spanning Via della Spiga, Via Monte Napoleone, Via Borgospesso and Via Sant'Andrea, is where designers like Prada and Armani have their workshops, and it's the focus of the fashion world's attention for four weeks a year when the summer and winter collections are shown.



• Milan's designers are known for a subversive attitude toward the conventions of fashion, and their work has become the stuff of fashion legend. In 1967, designer Missoni's show featured braless models wearing black silk dresses that became transparent on the catwalk, and in the 1980s Moschino made anti-fashion Minnie Mouse dresses with fried-egg buttons.



• Unfortunately, it's all but impossible for the general public to get in to see any of the collections, held at the start of January (Men's Spring-Summer), at the end of February (Women's Spring-Summer), at the beginning of October (Women's Autumn-Winter), and the end of June (Men's Autumn-Winter). Houses hold their own lavish, celebrity-studded presentations, and admission is by jealously guarded invitation only.



• For an accessible alternative to the catwalks, you can always do as the Italians do and check out the latest fashions on the evening passeggiata, leisurely stroll, along il corso, the main shopping street, or around the piazzas. This ritual of seeing and being seen is observed in every major town, and is a great way to watch Italians young and old strutting their stuff in all their finery.



• Although Milan appears to dominate the Italian fashion scene, the town of Florence has a long reputation as a producer of high quality crafts, particularly fashion accessories like handbags, shoes belts and briefcases.



• For exclusive shopping when in Rome, the place to go is Via Condotti. Situated at the base of the Spanish Steps, this is Rome's poshest shopping street and a playground for the rich and super-rich. Mere mortals, however, can enjoy window-shopping and people-watching.



• You have to head in centro, into the town centre, if you want to do any serious shopping. Most towns and city centres have a main road, il corso, where there are a variety of one-off elegant inviting shops and boutiques, but very few chain stores. And despite the global anti-fur movement, fur shops or pellicerie, are still very visible.



• Despite the international success of the Italian fashion scene, you'll still find many English and French words littering the Italian fashion vocabulary to provide extra snob appeal. If you're well off, you wear bijoux, jewels, not gioielli, the Italian word. Women seek to have lo chic and il sex-appeal, wearing clothes to suit il mood of the day. However whereas il top or il t-shirt are English, you'll wear them with i blue jeans, which is Italian in origin. It comes from blu di Genova, the heavy work material exported to the USA and used extensively by a certain Levi Strauss.