The Salone del Mobile, center stage of Italian design – The 53rd edition of the Salone del Mobile is around the corner and the foreign press looked towards Milan where the event, which brings the city into the limelight of design, is a pole of attraction for Expo 2015 (Financial Times, March 28 – Round-up of Milan’s Salone del Mobile and parallel design events). Brazilian papers are following the appointment with particular attention, reporting on the participation of its own designers in the world’s major design fair (March 29 in Valor Economico – O design brasileiro na Feira de Milão; O Globo – Evento em Milão apresenta trabalho de designers do Rio). According to the Financial Times, on the other hand, Italian design is still showing vitality, as seen in the successful exhibit of the work of Piero Fornasetti at the Milan Triennial and the fact that design is following the money-making path of fashion (March 28 – Fornasetti and the Italian design houses seeking brand success).
Leading figures of the economy – “The new FCA will ultimately produce 6 million cars a year.” The stockholders’ meeting of the Fiat Chrysler group, held in Turin, was widely reported in the foreign press. The center of attention was the group’s prospects for growth explained by Sergio Marchionne (March 31 su Washington Post – Fiat Chrysler: can boost output to 6M cars a year; Bloomberg – Fiat Chief Eyes Annual Sales of 7 Million After Chrysler Merger; O Globo – Fiat poderá produzir mais de 6 milhões de carros por ano até 2018, diz CEO).
Another economic Italian news was related to the stock Exchange listing of the asset manager Anima (New York Times, March 28 – Italy’s Anima Receives Regulatory Approval for I.P.O.) and the 2013 annual report of Salini Impregilo, with an interview of the group president Pietro Salini on the business environment in Italy (Financial Times, March 28 – Salini Impreglio – upbeat on Italy).
Fashion and Made in Italy luxury goods – A London exhibition, “The Glamour of Italian Fashion: 1945-2014,” is dedicated to Italian luxury design (New York Times, March 31 – Italy’s High Fashion on the Factory Floor; The Times, April 2 – Milan moves to win back its fashion crown, Washington Post, April 2 – Glamour of Italian fashion on show in London). The appointment gave the foreign press the opportunity to talk about the sector’s economic importance (Bloomberg Businessweek, April 2 – Why Fashion Means Business for Italy). There was another exhibit in Brazil dedicated to “Italian Glamour,” which brought 116 creations of Italian fashion to Rio de Janeiro (O Globo, March 29 – Exposição traz ao Rio peças dos maiores nomes da moda italiana). Finally, the Wall Street Journal and Le Figaro reported on Prada’s prospects for growth (April 2 – Prada Plans to Double Menswear Business; Les secrets de Prada pour grandir plus vite qu’Hermès, Gucci et Louis Vuitton), and El Pais had an article on the creation of Italia Indipendent April 3 – El último príncipe de Italia).
Tourism and Italian cuisine – An alliance of the great names of the coffee sector to find the DNA of the best of the brew. Illy and Lavazza will co-finance the genetic sequencing of Arabic coffee to improve the quality of the product served to consumers, and the news was reported by the Brazilian paper Valor Economico (March 31 – Em nome de um café de melhor qualidade) and the German paper Die Welt (March 28 – Italiener fürchten Kaffeekrise).
Finally, while the Financial Times went to Ferrara for the palio (March 28 – The Palio of Ferrara), the New York Times went to Piedmont, which it called one of the few places that offers such a high concentration of wonderful, local red wines and the home of nebbiolo (March 28 – Traipsing the Terroir of Nebbiolo). The American paper also offered its readers the recipe for a classic of Italian cooking, eggplant parmesan (April 2 – Eggplant Parmesan).
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