TWENTY-TWO women Italian politicians have posed as fashion models to “promote and defend the Italian fashion industry” against cheap Chinese imports and fake designer goods.

Their protest, timed to coincide with Milan fashion week, which opens tomorrow, comes hard on the heels of a trade trip to China by Romano Prodi, the Prime Minister.

Alessandra Mussolini, 43, the far-right deputy and granddaughter of the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, said she was unconcerned that feminists might think it inappropriate for female politicians to pose as glamour girls. “Women feel really at ease in Italian clothes,” she told the weekly magazine Donna Moderna.

Signora Mussolini, wearing a burgundy-coloured jacket and skirt by Roccobarocco, said that Italian designers “always play on the surprise factor — that is their genius. A beautiful outfit, designed from the heart, makes a woman look simpatica”. Emma Bonino, 58, the Minister for Europe in Signor Prodi’s centre-left Government and a former EU Commissioner, who is pictured wearing a Giorgio Armani black and white silk jacket, said an Italian outfit was “more than just clothing — people perceive in it a way of life, art, good food, song, in other words the very essence of Italy”.

Gabriella Carlucci, 47, a deputy for Silvio Berlusconi’s opposition Forza Italia party, said she was alarmed by the number of fake designer goods sold illegally on the streets of Italian cities. Also in the parade is Daniela Santanche, 45, a deputy for the “post-Fascist” Alleanza Nazionale. The women included Vladimir Luxuria, 41, a trans-sexual who won a seat in the election last April for the Refounded Communist Party.

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