Nardella: 'In Brussels, I will defend the reasons of Italian fashion'

'Pitti will have its own MEP. I have lived through twenty editions of this event as mayor and I feel part of this big family: I will bring the demands of Italian fashion to Brussels and I will defend its reasons". Dario Nardella attended the opening conference of Pitti Uomo 106 wearing a double hat: that of outgoing mayor of Florence and that of newly elected Italian parliamentarian (in the Pd quota) in Strasbourg and Brussels. It is precisely in the seats of the Europarliament that the now former tenant of Palazzo Vecchio says he wants to give voice to the Italian fashion industry: 'The first thing we must do is consolidate a series of alliances. As mayor I worked together with the first citizens of Milan, Beppe Sala, and Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and I have always believed in the need to activate synergies in Europe: if we split up we leave victory to Asian producers,' Nardella explains.

He puts a concrete proposal on the table: 'I would like to bring to Florence, perhaps even on the sidelines of a Pitti, a real summit on European fashion within which to build strategic and political alliances that are already such in practice: the French cannot do without Italian producers and Italian companies cannot do without French strength and capital. I am thinking of an axis that will serve, on the domestic market level, on the issues of the environmental challenge and production rules, while on the international front it must serve to protect the competitiveness of European companies with respect to Asian ones'. Nardella stresses the decisive importance of 'reciprocity of production standards'. A rule that the new European sustainability regulations only partially introduce so as not to create an excessive imbalance.

According to Dario Nardella, fashion is one of the sectors that has been able to react best to the crisis situations that have occurred from 2008 onwards: 'I learnt right at Pitti how fashion has managed to pull innovation, new formulas for doing business out of the crisis: public institutions have much to learn from the resilience of this creative industry - the period is not easy, there are those who manage to resist well despite the difficulties, but this is the moment when we have to talk about challenge, turning point and relaunch'.