3. the shrink fit; With the highest hems and miles of leg, Italian fashion editor Giovanna Battaglia flashes skin without sacrificing style.

Byline: Tim Blanks

Giovanna Battaglia waves the shortest skirt I've ever seen under my nose. Its six inches of gold-lined aquamarine silk aren't much more than a glorified belt. "So many fights with so many boyfriends," she sighs, remembering the nights she tried to leave the house sporting this sliver of Dolce & Gabbana. Far from being engaged by her leggy loveliness, Battaglia's beaux were enraged by what upstanding Italian males apparently construed as wanton exhibitionism. "But I can't change for any man," she says, defiance slightly tempered by the weariness of battles often fought and not always won. One paramour nixed a Gaultier denim micromini (and she was planning to wear it with gold underwear, too).

Still, we have our theme. Battaglia usually dresses to please herself, and her epater les bourgeois style usually involves legs. She recently turned 26, but the decade she is, unsurprisingly, drawn to is the eighties, when glamazons stalked the globe in thigh-high Alaia silhouettes attenuated by vertiginous heels. "Once I wore a beautiful dress from the thirties, and it was the worst night of my life," she remembers ruefully.

Fortunately for Battaglia, the new season brings with it a renewed appreciation of her style. Confronted by such unself-consciously glorious sex appeal, Milan just can't help itself. Heads spin like Linda Blair's when we're out walking. She remains oblivious, which is essential to her allure. She is also able to negotiate a full day, cobblestones included, on her Alaia heels, so she is clearly to the manner born.

She grew up at Via Montenapoleone 1, where the borders of her childhood world were the same streets that define Milan's Golden Triangle, as dense a concentration of luxury retail as you'll find anywhere in the world. (The storefront of her family's building, once a bread shop, is now a Ralph Lauren store.) Battaglia's parents, who split up when she was thirteen, were artists, ocean-hopping satellites of the worlds of Warhol and Studio 54 in the seventies. But she wanted nothing to do with art. As far back as she can remember, fashion was her obsession. At eight, she requested a fur coat. At twelve, she bought her first Vogue (her mother, Vincenza, still has them all).

She began modeling when she was sixteen because it seemed an obvious way to involve herself with fashion. A year later, Battaglia met Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, who fell hard for her look. Easy to see why: With her Sicilian father, Calabrian mother, olive skin, and dark eyes, she was the living, breathing embodiment of their Southern Italian ideal. At the same time, she had a mannequin's body, height, and hauteur. The fire of Magnani, the ice of Evangelista-perfetto! Battaglia was hired as a fitting model and "research assistant" (this part of her job consisted of muselike activities such as showing up at work in some gorgeous Sophia Loren-style underwear she'd found in a junk shop, which Stefano would promptly appropriate).

Vincenza liked and trusted Domenico and Stefano, so when Giovanna turned eighteen, she was finally allowed out to nightclubs. Within weeks she was dancing on tables in Capri, yachting from Porto Cervo to St.-Tropez, living La Dolce (& Gabbana) Vita. "I used to buy a new outfit every Friday for the disco," she says. "Four years ago, I ended up with no daywear. I was wearing jeweled sandals in the day." Battaglia spent money as fast as she made it, thinking nothing of crossing the Atlantic for a party. And then, three years ago, the Damascene conversion: Modeling suddenly seemed too much-or too little. Battaglia packed a ...