Italian People: leading figures in business and finance, politics and culture – This week, as the foreign press waited for the Italian government’s reforms to start to take shape, the attention of international newspapers seemed to focus on leading Italians in fields ranging from business and finance to culture, with coverage once again not spurning the political sphere either. Of note among the more recent crop of articles was an interview with Mario Draghi in The Wall Street Journal, in which the ECB President spoke of the reforms needed to boost the economy of the Old Continent (February 24, Europe’s Banker Talks Tough, accompanied by a piece to video – ECB Chief Mario Draghi to Europe: Don’t Get Comfortable). Les Echos also carried an item on Draghi, noting the praise heaped on him by the economists Paul Krugman and George Soros (February 20 – Les économistes américains relativisent la crise grecque et louent Mario Draghi), whilst the Prime Minister Mario Monti was described by Expansión as providing “a role model“ for Spanish politicians (February 19 – El ejemplo de Mario Monti). In a similar Italo-Spanish vein was a lengthy interview given by Romano Prodi to Spain’s ABC daily, in which the former President of the EU Commission stressed the importance of the Rome-Madrid axis in Europe (February 23 – “Un acuerdo entre España e Italia es esencial para el debate en Europa”).
Italy was also well-represented in the pages of the foreign press this week by its leading lights in culture. Without question, the lion’s share of the coverage went to the Taviani brothers, whose film “Caesar must die” recently won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival (on February 28 in Die Zeit – Goldener Bär geht nach Italien, as well as in Die Welt – Goldener Bär für Film mit echten Schwerverbrechern; and on February 29 in El Mundo – Los Taviani resucitan a Shakespeare en la cárcel y consiguen el Oso de Oro). Another noteworthy piece was a lengthy profile of Renzo Piano in Le Monde, which reported that forty years on from the construction of the Pompidou Centre, the Genoese architect, described as a “civic poet”, has been chosen to build the new Law Courts complex in Paris (February 17 – Renzo Piano, poète civil).
The new collections and strategies of Italy’s leading fashion labels – This week also saw the first articles on Milan Fashion Week begin to appear in the foreign press. Whilst La Vanguardia (February 24 – Max Mara y Fendi seducen con sus diseños contemporáneos en Milán) and Le Figaro (February 23 – Les troublantes écuyères préraphaélites de Gucci) concentrated on the new collections being presented, Brazil’s Valor Econômico and America’s Businessweek also looked at the business strategies of the major fashion labels, with a particular focus on high-end ranges and emerging markets (February 23 – Contra crise, grifes italianas buscam consumidores de países emergentes*; and February 22 – Gucci Using Python as Rich Drive Profit Margin Above 30%: Retail). Lastly, in a week where print media coverage was characterized by a manifest interest in Italian personalities, there could not fail to be a mention of one of the stars of the Made-in-Italy industry, Giorgio Armani, with Die Welt publishing a wide-ranging interview with the designer to mark the opening of his first boutique in Berlin (February 19 – “Ich bin Mitarbeiter von Giorgio Armani”).
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