Lacroix, who had been quoted as saying it will be ‘unfair’ to the Falic Group (the new owners of Christian Lacroix) to continue working for Pucci, took his final bow Tuesday for the Italian fashion house.

During the height of Gucci’s popularity in the late 1990s, Wall Street asked, ‘Why is Pucci not Gucci-ed?’ alluding to the fact that both houses are legends in Italian fashion.

It took a few years to come out with an answer and Pucci’s answer was Christian Lacroix who revitalized the brand. Respecting the iconic Pucci prints, Christian Lacroix re-introduced it to a new generation and also created a new buzz by playing on the colors that has made the house famous.

The French couturier who debuted in Milan during the Spring 2003 season had a good three-year run for Pucci. His first collection was lauded as ‘moving Pucci forward’ and that he did until his final collection this season.

He will be sorely missed on the Milan runways. And for those of us who follow the fashion circuit, it is good to know that he will be seen four times in Paris for his haute couture and prêt-a-porter collections.

In another development, the Italian fashion community is in an uproar with the ‘Magnificent Seven’ list of designers proclaimed by American Vogue as ‘those taking fashion into the future.’

The list is composed of: Miuccia Prada, Stefano Pilati for Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Jacobs, Olivier Theyskens for Rochas, Narciso Rodriguez, Alber Elbaz for Lanvin and Nicolas Ghesquière for Balenciaga.

With Miuccia Prada as the only Italian on the list, it has become a matter of ‘national pride,’ and rightly so, because if you look at fashion world’s famous labels, a big percentage of them is Italian.

Still, as a second thought, isn’t it that Stefano Pilati is Italian by birth? Yes, he works for Yves Saint Laurent, which is a French fashion house, but the Gucci Group owns it, which is Italian.

The Gucci Group is owned by PPR, a French multi-national. Hence, the question is – do you classify Stefani Pilati as Italian or French by virtue of the fashion house and its owners.

Nicolas Ghesquière falls in the same category, with minor differences - French by birth, he is the Creative Director of Balenciaga, a Spanish fashion house currently owned by Gucci Group, and in turn PPR.

Olivier Theyskens is a Belgian working for a French fashion house while Alber Elbaz is an Israeli-American working for Lanvin, a French fashion house that is currently owned by a Taiwanese conglomerate.

Both Marc Jacobs and Narciso Rodriguez are Americans and own their labels with support from financiers. Both are of course classified as American fashion houses.

In this world of multi-national corporations and technology-oriented civilization, we have become a world without borders, and that also includes the fashion world.

Though it is very understandable that some Italian designers ‘feel indignant’ for the ‘Magnificent Seven’ list as a matter of national pride, the question that remains – ‘do we classify fashion houses by the nationality of their Creative Director or who owns them?’

Case in point, Christian Lacroix is the quintessential French designer, but since the new owners of his house is the Falic Group, does it mean that Christian Lacroix is now an American fashion house? Of course, we will always think of Christian Lacroix as French.

Maybe, the answer is, it is a case-to-case basis. Marc Jacobs for instance designs for his own label while at the same time designing for Louis Vuitton. In New York, he is classified as an American, but in Paris, when he takes his bow for Louis Vuitton, the house remains as French as ever and would never be thought of as ‘American’ by virtue of its Creative Director’s national origin.

For Europe, which has closed its borders for immigration for a very long time, the concept of having a ‘mixture of races’ and calling all of them ‘Europeans’ although the people are definitely of another national origin is new.

In North America, specifically the U.S. and Canada, who had been accepting immigrants since these countries came into being, everyone is just called an ‘American’ for the U.S. and ‘Canadians’ if you live north of the 49th parallel.

Hence, Narciso Rodriguez who was born and raised in the U.S. is as American as the red, white and blue of Old Glory although he is Cuban in origin. In fact, as a Cuban-American, Time Magazine has named him as 1 of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics in the U.S.

Carolina Herrera, Oscar De La Renta, Zang Toi, even Diane von Furstenberg who was a Princess by marriage, immigrated to the U.S. when they were already adults. By virtue of naturalization, they are Americans!

The American fashion community do not even think of their national origins. Somewhere at the back of their minds, they know where they were born and raised, yet it never mattered, because to the American fashionistas, Carolina Herrera, Oscar De La Renta, Zang Toi and Diane von Furstenbergs are Americans and what they brought to the U.S. when they immigrated has enriched the American culture.

So, maybe, national origin is not the crux of the matter for the ‘Magnificent Seven’ list, because if we look at it, those in the list has crossed national borders literally and figuratively.

If we classify the Magnificent Seven list by their births, TWO are Italians, one is Belgian, one is an Israeli, one is French, and for the two Americans – Marc Jacobs and Narciso Rodriguez, somewhere in their family tree, they came from somewhere else other than the U.S.

As most people already know, all Americans came from an “immigrant” family at one point in time in their history.

Now, if we look at the ‘owners’ of these fashion houses, it really gets muddled up, and truly, there are really no borders or boundaries here because corporations are made up of stockholders from different walks of life and from different countries.

At this point in time, maybe we should look into the world of science fiction where borders are almost non-existent for humans. Like Battlestar Galactica for example, wherein 12 human colonies function as ONE although they live in different parts of our galaxy.

In the lore, the humans live in habitable planets that are in the 12 constellations that we know. They’re looking for Earth and their long lost siblings, but that is another story that should be told to a different audience.