The snow was falling on the queues outside the Prada fashion show when the sound system drove up. The canvas backed truck led a thirty strong group of protesters and smoke flares appeared from nowhere. Green and red smoke wafted over the crowds and into the venue. Security personal could be seen speaking rapidly into their radios and few police officers looked on but did not attempt to interfere. The assorted fashion groupies, journalists, columnists, buyers, wannabes etc. looked up from under their umbrellas to see what the fuss was all about.

A swarm of protesters handed out leaflets to the people they could reach and tossed handfuls high in to the air so as to reach the people in the centre of the huddle around the entrance. From the back of the truck a banner was hung and the night was lit by the flashes of cameras as the attending press started to take an interest in what was going on.

All around; security, cops, journalists, and the various flavors of fashion groupies could all be seen reading the weighty activist texts. Another few bundles were tossed into the air above the crowd and the sound system moved off leaving a bemused crowd and the threat of further interventions against the fashions shows during the rest of the week.

Top on the list of designers likely to recieve the attentions of the gathering activists will be the young anglojapanese, Serpica Naro ( http://www.serpicanaro.com/). The Tokyo based designer has earned a reputation for consistently pushing at the boundaries of fashion but has angered many for her soleless expropation of counter culture.

The fashion industry itself is accused of many things from encouraging unsustainable consumerism, to utilising child, bonded and sweatshop labour.

Further actions in Milan this week seem certain...

Translated quotes taken from the distributed leaflet  http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2005/02/734129.php ...

"We will defy the week of the fashion, its real and virtual suggestions and its stages."

"We will prevent to costoro of impossessarsi of our roads and the imaginary ones that are fruit and projection of our desires."

"The place (Milan) and the shapes (the precarieta) of this challenge have been established not by us, but we therefore reserve the right to choose the times and the ways!"

Further info sources quoted on the leaflet,
 http://www.sanprecario.info
 http://www.chainworkers.org  http://reload.realityhacking.org
 boccaccio@autistici.org

Activists from London and Barcelona also attended the Prada action in Milan, reflecting the globalisation of protest on the issue of 'fashion'. Last week saw London fashion week and it was also accompanied by protests and a counter event called 'conscious fashion week'(www.conscious-fashion.co.nr) that was held at the rampART social centre in east london (www.rampart.co.nr).

In September there will be mobilisations in Barcelona and also during the Paris Fashion Week.