Ermenegildo Zegna SpA and Raffaele Caruso SpA are among Italian luxury goods purveyors that are optimistic for 2012 despite Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis weighs on demand in the region and growth slows in Asia. Suitmaker Zegna said it anticipates high single-digit percentage revenue growth, led by customers from outside Europe, after record sales and profit in 2011. Caruso, which makes menswear for brands including Christian Dior SA, expects sales to rise 20 percent this year based on current orders, said CEO Umberto Angeloni.

“Asia will be the real growth propeller, followed by the U.S.,” Zegna said in a Jan. 14 interview before the Trivero- based company’s fall-winter 2012/2013 menswear show in Milan.

Salvatore Ferragamo SpA, is also very “confident” for 2012 after an “excellent” 2011, which included better-than-expected holiday sales, Chief Executive Officer Michele Norsa said yesterday at the company’s men’s fashion show in Milan. The luxury goods sector will expand 10 percent in 2012, or half last year’s rate, excluding currency moves and acquisitions, Thomas Mesmin, an analyst at CA Cheuvreux, estimates.  Sales will rise approximately 20 percent in Asia, excluding Japan, 6 percent in the U.S., 5 percent in Europe and 2.5 percent in Japan, he figures. “Current sales growth is definitely not sustainable,” Mesmin wrote in a report last month. “Don’t stop the party, just turn down the volume.”

The economic turmoil in Europe is cause for “major caution,” even if growth in Asia and the Americas compensates for a slowdown, said Roberto Cavalli SpA CEO Gianluca Brozzetti. Standard & Poor’s decision last week to downgrade the sovereign credit ratings of nine of the euro area’s 17 members, including Italy, will hurt local demand for luxury goods on the continent, regardless of customers’ net worth, said Zegna.