Fashion Wire Daily - Paris - One of Italian fashion's greatest innovators, Romeo Gigli, is to return to the scene with a new label entitled Io Ipse Idem.

Gigli, who lost control of his own name after a bruising legal fight with former partners IT Holding, will present his first collection of men's fashion bearing the new label during the men's fall 2009 fashion collections in Paris in January.

The new label - which roughly translates as I Myself The Same - will be financed by IP Investimenti e Partecipazioni, a privately held investment company headed up by Michele Denegri.

"I feel like a river that has branched off into so many tributaries and canals that its main course has become a trickle. Yet by spreading out across a vast territory, the waters have been imbued with a wealth of flavors, odors, colors and moods from far a field," said Gigli, 56, in a typically poetic remark announcing his return.

Gigli exploded onto the international scene in the late Eighties, when he decamped his runway show from Milan and Paris, earning rave reviews for his sumptuous, grand ethnic fashion. His successful sojourn across the Alps earned him the sobriquet, the Garibaldi of Fashion.

The new house, which will be headquartered in Milan, will have as its CEO Catherine Vautrin, an experienced French luxury executive who did stints at Louis Vuitton, managing that label's fledgling women's ready-to-wear business, and at Pucci, where she was managing director for five years.

Vautrin noted that future plans include a flagship store in Paris, reflecting Romeo's new esthetic vision.

Gigli's renaissance will mark the return of one of fashion's most distinctive voices. Where his women's collections were noted for their opulence and subtly curved, Poiret like silhouette, his men's fashion managed to combine the strict tailoring of his native Italy with an haute bohemian, Asian-influenced sensibility.

Gigli, an architect by profession, founded his own house back in 1985 immediately winning notice with a suave sensibility and rich and eclectic fabric choice. In 1999, IT Holding acquired majority control of his brand, an ultimately unhappy business marriage, which led to Gigli severing all connections with the house that bore his own name in 2004.

"Mine is not a new physicality; it is a new look at the physical essence of others to glean musicality, shape and matter," Gigli told a press conference in Milan announcing the re-launch.