Two huge ticking clocks hung on the entranceway of the Fortezza de Basso, the Sixteenth-century fort in Florence which hosts the twice-yearly menswear truthful Pitti Uomo. If ‘time’ was the official theme of this yr’s version – elsewhere within the truthful digital clocks whirred with numbers, counting down after which again up once more, as if glitching – a consideration of temporality appeared to additionally infuse the varied collection of designers and types on present, whether or not contained in the Fortezza or in venues throughout town.
Florence, in fact, supplies the right backdrop for an exploration of the passing of time. You may flip the nook, or go by way of a doorway, and really feel like you’re transferring by way of centuries; as a colleague famous on the primary night, having ascended a sweeping stone staircase into the ornate Seventeenth-century Palazzo Corsini on the River Arno, it was nearly overwhelming to suppose that folks had been occupying these hallways for a whole lot of years, and we have been merely one of many hundreds to stroll alongside its gently worn stone flooring (the event was a fittingly dramatic candlelit feast held by Italian designer Brunello Cucinelli, the unofficial opening of the truthful).
Pitti Uomo 105: every little thing you must know
The ticking clocks contained in the truthful itself, which is held at Fortezza de Basso
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Pitti Uomo)
British designer Steven Stokey-Daley of eponymous label SS Daley – one among this season’s visitor designers on the truthful – chosen the Salone dei Cinquecento within the Palazzo Vecchio to indicate his A/W 2024 assortment, the huge, ornate corridor constructed in 1494 as a seat for the nice council of town’s non secular chief Savonarola. The designer – whose work usually seems to be to the previous in an effort to discover the British class system – started with a 1911 EM Forster quick story, A Story of A Panic. In it, a gaggle of British vacationers expertise the onset of an odd, inexplicable horror, regardless of the picturesque environment of the Italian village through which they discover themselves. Like Stokey-Daley’s work, it explores themes of social mobility and sophistication – right here set amid the fast-changing social mores of the flip of the century – but additionally in its undercurrent of queer sexuality by way of its flighty protagonist Eustace.
Stokey-Daley stated that the gathering tried to seize a sense of lightness, the sensation of escaping oppressive British establishments. The primary look did so actually: the mannequin walked in a tailor-made jacket and white shirt, trousers solely eliminated. Different seems to be noticed fashions cloaked in huge knitted ponchos, which the designer stated got here from the concept of tapestries he encountered on analysis journeys to Florence; he imagined his personal protagonist waking up in mattress and greedy the blanket to wrap round himself as he wandered the hallways. Different items riffed on the normal garb of academia, right here dishevelled or within the means of being deserted (whether or not rugby-style shirts or formal nightgowns). Tailoring was a spotlight, which Stokey-Daley stated was all the way down to shifting the manufacturing to Italy: ’Not solely is it a unique expertise exhibiting right here, however making all of the samples right here and creating the gathering right here was actually an incredible expertise for me,’ he stated after the present. Like Forster – maybe greatest epitomised by his 1908 novel A Room With A View – Stokey-Daley appeared enamoured by the dizzy liberation that being in Florence can deliver.
(Picture credit score: Images by Giovanni Giannoni, courtesy of Pitti Uomo/Magliano)
Luca Magliano, the season’s different visitor designer, hails from Bologna, the place his model remains to be primarily based. He selected not the splendour of Renaissance Florence and town’s panoply of palazzos and piazzas, however the Nelson Mandela Discussion board, a sports activities stadium on the outskirts of town, to current his personal A/W 2024 present. There, he erected an unlimited staircase down which his fashions walked earlier than traversing the dimly lit area. His garments too look to historical past – the uniforms of the late radical poet Patrizia Bellini have been one inspiration – whereas the impromptu glamour of Bologna’s streets, identified for his or her lengthy historical past of sophistication protest and radicalism, ran all through the gathering. His knack as a designer is to create items that look lifted from time – a sweater with an intarsia cat appeared as if it had been found folded away in an attic – and but every bit is cleverly shot by way of with a frisson of subversion that makes it really feel solely modern (tailoring, for instance, wrapped and twisted across the physique, whereas footwear have been studded with sharp silver spikes).
‘An investigation into the idea of the basic which applies to every little thing as an absolute rule and but stays completely reversible on the identical time,’ he instructed Scarlett Conlon of the present, noting that the staircase was his personal touch upon class – ‘a vertical construction that unites prime and backside… a merciless political metaphor’.
At Achilles Ion Gabriel – a Finnish designer who’s at the moment the artistic director of Camper footwear, however was right here making his debut beneath his eponymous label – there was an analogous temper of dishevellment. Sculpturally crumpled fits levitated away from the physique, whereas lacy slip clothes appeared stained round their hemline. The deserted grandeur of Stazione Leopolda – first inbuilt 1848, earlier than being reworked into manufacturing unit area in the course of the Second World Battle – offered a becoming backdrop, right here wearing pale blue curtains (the fledgling model’s signature color). He was at his greatest, although, when being extra playful: brown cow prints, blocky cowboy boots, and vibrant shearling-style trims mirrored the levity of his designs at Camper.
Achilles Ion Gabriel A/W 2024
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Pitti Uomo)
Within the truthful itself – which felt maybe the busiest it had been since earlier than the pandemic – Brunello Cucinelli confirmed his newest assortment, which appeared again to the Nineteen Eighties with broad-lapelled outsized outerwear, louche pinstripe tailoring and loads of shearling (the latter impossibly light-weight), all infused with the designer’s typical sprezzatura. Prints got here in moments of paisleys, whereas ties – which look set to have a resurgence this yr – got here in a large number of iterations (largely slim). A brand new crackled matt leather-based, in the meantime, was used throughout the model’s luggage and equipment, and can little doubt age gracefully.
Herno, in the meantime, continued its journey from historic outerwear model – it was born on the shores of Lake Maggiore within the mid-Fifties with modern castor-oil-treated raincoats – to a extra wide-ranging modern trend label. The model describes it as a ’full look’ strategy, trying to create a complete wardrobe from a large number of coats and jackets to trousers, knitwear and tailoring, alongside a smooth, sportswear-infused out of doors providing. The collections stay rooted in Herno’s heritage, although, notably of their use of fabrications; right here, these spanned cashmere, cashmere blends and opulent knitwear, in addition to extra sporty technical materials. The final have been used on a featherweight puffer jacket, impressed by an unique Herno design from early within the model’s historical past. There, it was used as an inside lining; right here, it grew to become the right jacket for journey (I scrunched it up in my palms and it bounced again with no crease).
Herno A/W 2024, which focussed on material
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Pitti Uomo)
Regardless of celebrating 40 years in enterprise this yr, denim model Guess had its eyes squarely set on the longer term. Taking up the modern theatre Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, it staged an immersive exhibition which took friends on a whistlestop tour of the model’s historical past – which started in a humble fish retailer in in Bandol, south of France – earlier than revealing its newest innovation, ’Guess Airwash’ in an interactive lab. Promising to exchange the water and the resource-heavy means of stone washing – which the model launched in 1981, having been seduced by Californian type codes in a visit to America simply prior – the method, powered by Jeanologia, makes use of air and light-weight to exchange the normal pumice stones, whereas water consumption drops dramatically. Within the closing product – the distinction from the unique stonewashed pairs barely perceptible – previous, current and future collided.
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