Pitti Uomo, the largest men’s trade fair in Florence, traditionally kicks off the men’s season, a fact you may not know if you concentrate your attention on catwalk fashion. The fair, colloquially known as Pitti, has a bit of a dual nature. The main offerings tend toward traditional notions of sartorial excellence, expressed in impeccably tailored suiting and mountains of off-white cashmere. As if to counterbalance that, Pitti also invites promising young designers to stage fashion shows. Sometimes these brands are already generating buzz, other times they are quite unknown outside of fashion diehard circles.
For the 109th edition of Pitti Uomo, the three brands invited to stage their shows –– Shinyakozuka, Hed Mayner, and SOSHIOTSUKI –– proved that Pitti organizers keep an ear close to the ground. All three shows were testaments to individuality. Even if results varied, they reflected younger brands gaining footing in an industry that has become overly concentrated. This is a welcome and refreshingly uncommercial development.
The runway program was kicked off by the young Japanese brand Shinyakozuka, whose baggy pants are a sleeper hit among a certain set of young fashion-obsessed TikTokers. I discovered Shinya Kozuka (the name of the designer and the name of the brand is separated by a space) almost two years ago at Tokyo Fashion Week, and I was immediately drawn to his work. There was a sense of naïveté in his childlike drawings on tailoring and embedded into his knits. Naïveté can be either infuriating or endearing, and Kozuka’s is the latter. The work speaks of an inner world trying to find outward momentum in sartorial expression — the stuff auteurs are made of.
So it was with this collection, which, according to Kozuka, began with him contemplating a single rain drop. One drop became many, and these turned to artificial snow that served as the base of the catwalk. Kozuka’s sensitive boys came out one by one dressed in loose coats and introspection. The soft melancholy covered them like falling snow, which was also expressed in white and light gray felting over black wool coats, one of which sported hundreds of hand-sewn buttons that in their clanking reminded me of the pleasant crunch of fresh snow. “Youth is gone. Moon is there. Winter stands,” proclaimed aprons draped around the models’ midsections, adding to a sense of ennui that Kozuka managed to express even in the black-and-white sneakers from Reebok, one of six collaborations for this collection.
At Hed Mayner’s show, which immediately followed Kozuka’s, the Israeli designer who is known for his jumbo silhouettes decided to tone the volume down, which was a welcome development. After all, human anatomy is there for a reason, and while playing with it is never a bad idea, drowning it in fabric until it looks like it is wearing an older sibling’s hand-me-downs is rarely flattering. The volume was still there but more coherent, and it alternated with large-shoulder blazers that were nipped at the waist. This combination managed to look like the designer was not trying too hard to impress –– and nonchalance is never not appealing.
Big shoulders — huge shoulders, enormous shoulders — were also on display at SOSHIOTSUKI, which closed the Pitti Uomo program. The Japanese designer has been generating some buzz, winning last year’s LVMH prize, which was quickly followed by a Zara collab. I’ve been following his work with interest for about four years, after his signature design device of extending a jacket’s lining to the outer of the lapel caught my eye. There was a promise there, a hint of Yohji Yamamoto updated for Gen Z, but a year ago, Soshi Otsuki pivoted in an Armani-esque direction with gray oversized suits. So it was with this collection that deftly mixed Armani and Yamamoto, more American Gigolo meets Brother and less Dolls.
Otsuki, born in 1990, is a product of his generation, and he is unabashed about citing references rather than being overly concerned with originality. Still, these were no mere copies, and there were some standout looks, such as a distressed sashiko-on-steroids suit — one of the very few that was not double-breasted — and clever sartorial winks like downturned lapel ends, which you’d usually find on cheap suits. And yet, I couldn’t help but see this collection as a product of contemporary fashion, which is drowning in unconnected nostalgia, condemned to regurgite past styles, layering pastiche over pastiche instead of creating something radically new.
I also had to wonder who exactly this was for. Remove the beautiful setting of the Santa Maria cloisters, where the show was held, and the beautiful models who wore the clothes, and the conservative streak of this collection was pronounced –– just like it is more immediately apparent in the static images of Otsuki’s previous collection. Will young people go for gray double-breasted suits? It’s doubtful, as it is equally doubtful that older men will. Undoubtedly, Otsuki has some interesting ideas, and going forward, I hope he expresses them in a more daring fashion.
Having seen the three shows, and countless others since I began coming to Florence 17 years ago, it is gratifying to see Pitti Uomo, often typecast as a more “classic” menswear event, position itself as an important stage where young talent can shine. It is especially important today, with the industry’s attention increasingly directed toward big names, leaving less and less room for the independent designers who are arguably more important for the ecosystem. Set against Pitti’s sartorial classicism, this trio provided welcome freshness, underscoring that there is plenty of room for a variety of voices in contemporary menswear.
