Lifestyle Mirror

If the great women’s fashion week scheduling catfight of 2011 wasn’t enough à la mode drama for your taste, now comes one from the men’s side of the industry. If you remember, last year Milan was openly feuding in the press with New York and London about overlapping show dates, claiming that this discrepancy led to disappointing turnouts from editors, and perhaps more importantly, buyers.

After three months of gridlocked quarrelling, a truce was reached in January but now the argument has heated up again. Though this time it’s an argument rooted around menswear, with the single-season-old London menswear collections at the center of the battle.  In perhaps one of the more passive, but still aggressive, publicity moves in recent fashion-related memory, Pitti Uomo and its organizer, Pitti Immagine, have released a statement on their blog “criticizing” the LFW dates that were recently announced by England’s British Fashion Council. “Pitti Immagine believes this decision offers a distorted view of the competitive context of the top men’s fashion fairs,” reads the release.

And while the tiff is mainly the result of botched logistics, this recent gaffe highlights the importance of globalized cooperation in an industry that operates on a worldwide sphere. —Misty White Sidell (@MistyWhiteS)