On the closing evening of Milan Fashion Week, the great and the good of Italian fashion came to pay their respects to one of the most powerful women in the industry.
Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli, Stefano Sassi of Valentino, Gildo Zegna of Ermenegildo Zegna, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, Giorgio Armani and Remo Ruffini of Moncler made their way to a Milanese palazzo beside the city's Renaissance castle to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Vogue Italia.
The star of the show was not the glossy title's cover pages projected on to the walls of the palazzo but the woman at its helm, Franca Sozzani, Vogue Italia's editor for 26 years and one of the two longest serving editors of any Vogue ever, the other being Anna Wintour of US Vogue.
"Half of the GDP of Italy is in this room," commented Yoox founder and chief executive Federico Marchetti to guests at the dinner that followed. It was a quip that acknowledged the influence that Ms Sozzani, 64, has cultivated over nearly three decades in Italy's multibillion-euro fashion industry - and beyond - refusing to be limited by an idea that fashion is just frocks.
"Fashion is much bigger than a dress," Ms Sozzani told the FT in an interview from her office in the days before the party. "I am sometimes criticised for using moda for talking [about] other matters, but today fashion is enormous, everyone speaks of fashion or what is not fashion. It can be seen as the 'fatal attraction' of everything."
Ms Sozzani's boldness in tackling social issues through fashion has defined her editorship of Vogue Italia, shaking up the magazine she describes as having been a "catalogue of brands" before her arrival in 1988 from young woman's fashion magazine Lei. Instead, she gave photographers including Bruce Weber, Steven Meisel and Paolo Roversi freedom to create startling and shocking images and gave the magazine clout beyond Italy's borders.
In 2005, Vogue Italia's cover "Makeover Madness" criticised the cult for cosmetic surgery. The highest-selling issue ever was "The Black Issue" in 2008, which featured only black models.
Nor has her ability to use Vogue Italia to shock diminished with age. A cover in April 2014 titled "Horror Story" and shot by Meisel showed fashionably dressed women being attacked by men with axes or lying on the floor in blood. Ms Sozzani's aim was to discuss domestic violence. But the cover attracted widespread criticism from writers who argued that it should not have been shot at all, to those who felt that at the very least the fashion credits should have been stripped off.
Ms Sozzani stands firm. "We can talk about women in Africa, women in Ukraine, we can talk about domestic violence, we can talk about the use of black models," she says.
She was also quick to embrace "digital as the new revolution", starting up a blog four years ago. As part of its 50th anniversary, Vogue.it has also put its archives online with the aim of reaching a wider audience.
"If you communicate in the right way, it is for everyone," she says.
Her embrace of digital media and fashion to address wider social issues has made Ms Sozzani and Vogue Italia arguably more relevant than 10 years ago. Though its distribution of 120,000 is small compared with US Vogue's 1.3m, 30 per cent of Vogue Italia's readership is non-Italian while the website has 1.86m users, with half the traffic coming from outside of Italy.
But while Vogue Italia has boosted its appeal, Milan Fashion Week - the twice-yearly fashion parade of which she is unofficial high priestess - is coming under pressure season after season to defend its relevance, particularly against up-and-coming London.
"London is more about marketing and we are more about the long term," responds Ms Sozzani, showing a glint of the steeliness that belies her elfin appearance, one she appears to embrace with relish, rarely stepping out without her signature low-heeled shoes.
"Italy is the fashion week with the highest concentration of the most famous brands in the world, and it has the manufacturing industry. We are not the best at marketing, but we do - rather than talk about what we are doing."
Another criticism Ms Sozzani is having to face with more frequency is that Italy's fashion establishment - of which she and her sister Carla, owner of influential Milan fashion boutique 10 Corso Como, are also part - is not leaving enough space for new names. The issue of generational change is hot in Italy, with its 39-year old prime minister Matteo Renzi calling for a "scrapping" of old elites to spur economic renewal.
Ms Sozzani shrugs it off, noting that Stella Jean, a young Italian-Haitian designer and past winner of a Vogue Italia-sponsored talent competition, is selling all over the world. MSGM, a brand started in 2008 by former accountant Massimo Giorgetti, is also doing well.
"We Italians want to see brands grow - we are not into just getting a flash in the pan for one season," she says.
Inevitably though, last year's celebrations for her 25th anniversary at Vogue Italia, followed by this year's party for the magazine's 50th anniversary celebrations, are raising questions in Milan as to whether Ms Sozzani, who is also editorial director of Conde Nast in Italy, is considering her own exit.
"Nothing is part of anything for ever. I still don't understand how I came to be here. Things evolve by themselves. I don't know if there is a before or afterwards. It will all flow naturally," she says.
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