Italy will not miss Chic 2008, the largest Asian fashion event, and will aim to play a leading role in it. An official delegation organised by the Italian Trade Commission (ICE) will arrive in Beijing for the sixteenth edition of the fair, which will take from the 28^th to the 31^st March 2008 in the new exhibition centre of the Chinese capital (New China International Exhibition Centre) and will occupy a 100,000 square meter area. The fair is now recognised as unmissable by ICE: 2008 will be the fourth consecutive year in which an official Italian delegation has taken part in it.

Chic 2008 allows local buyers to develop contacts with the key local and international operators, while at the same time it offers exhibitors from all over the world the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of a market increasingly susceptible to global trends. Figures from the recent fashion week confirm this analysis. The fall/winter 2008 edition was held from 14-17 January at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre: 40,000 people visited the stands hosting 1,500 exhibitors. One sixth of them (255 exhibitors from 13 countries including Italy) offered 366 brands.

Numbers on Chinese exports and domestic consumption offer further confirmation of the country’s dynamic textile industry. For 2007, the National Development and Reform Commissionforecasts a 20.3% increase in the volume of sales to approximately 271.56 billion euros. According to the China National Textile and Apparel Council, Chinese textiles exports in the first nine months of 2007 were worth around 57.85 billion euros, a trend increase of 22.97%. Knitwear sales did better, exports having grown by 40.22% to 30.49 billion euros. External textile sales ‘limited’ their progress to a 10.02% increase, reaching a value of 24.11 billion euros.

In the meantime, the National Chamber for Italian Fashion (www.cameramoda.it/eng) released its estimated 2007 figures for the Italian textile-fashion industry, at the recent Milan fashion shows featuring the 2008 fall/winter collections. The Chamber’s President, Mario Boselli, observed that, after an essentially good two years (2005-2006) and a good start of the year, the last quarter of 2007 marked a slight slowdown for the sector - stronger at the origin of the supply chain (on textiles) than at the end (clothing). This is largely the fault of the euro-dollar and euro-yen exchange rates, which damage exports to important markets as the United States and Japan. According to the latest estimates by Sistema Moda Italia (Italian Textile and Fashion Industry Federation the sector should manage to close the 2007 year with an annual increase in turnover of 3.3% to 56.6 billion euros. Exports were strong, expected to grow by 5% to 29 billion euros.