While the marathon of the spring-summer 2012 collections just ended, the organizers of Fashion Week in New York and Milan are in the midst of a heated disagreement over the calendar for September of 2013. A disagreement which, for the time being, has amounted to a deadlock with an overlap of dates between the catwalks of Milan and London, and one which has not spared Condé Nast (read: Vogue).

At issue: the start of the New York fashion week (set for a Thursday) and the constraints of each of the others. On one side, there is the CFDA who wants to push the start of Fashion Week past Labor Day, a holiday that is held every first Monday in September. On the other side of the Atlantic, we have the Camera Della Moda who wants to avoid holding the Milan Fashion Week at the end of September. Too late, according to organizers: for buyers it’s a question of budget and for labels, a question of timely delivery.

And yet, faced with next September’s calendar and taking into account New York’s contingencies, Italy’s Camera della Moda has decided to go ahead and publish its dates last week: these ranged from Tuesday the 19th to Wednesday the 25th. But, proceeding retroactively in order to rectify the situation, New York would have then had to start on either September 6th, or three days after Labor Day. This time it was the CFDA who protested, deeming it too early and claiming that the “tacit” rule among the four major Fashion Week organizers (CFDA, British Fashion Council, Camera della Moda and Chambre syndicale de la Couture) sets the start of Fashion Week in September for the second Thursday of the month. And thus, the program is to begin September 13th. According to this schedule, Milan’s Fashion Week would then begin on September 26th and end on October 2nd, while the London affair would take place between September 21st and 25th…Or on the week determined by the Camera della Moda in Milan.

Far from reaching an amicable solution, the exchanges seem only to become more tense on either side of the Atlantic. In a letter addressed to U.S. fashion industry players, the CFDA, joined by the BFC, reaffirmed its position and dates. The Camera Della Moda, for its part, in an official statement released October 7th, reiterated its schedule as set for the week of September 19th to the 25th. In other words, as things now stand, Fashion Week in London and Milan clearly overlap and the Camera Della Moda does not appear to be deterred by statements made by Jonathan Newhouse, CEO of Condé Nast International, to the President Mario Boselli, to the effect that if Milan fails to alter its planned schedule, then some Condé Nast journalists would not attend Milan’s Fashion Week in case of a conflict.