Who and how forms the masculine taste in clothes
From January 7 to 10, a new one passed Autumn-Winter, the season of Pitti Uomo - Florentine exhibition of clothes in the fortress Fortezza da Basso by the Renaissance architect Antonio de Sangallo. This is the first event of this winter that defines fashion for men for the next six months - along with other smaller trade shows and fashion week shows. Wonderzine fashion editor Lisa Kologreeva went to Pitti Uomo to find out how buyers and brands shape the taste of men and how many of them will look like in 2014.
We arrive in Florence one day before the start of the Pitti clothing exhibition, go down to the bar under the windows, and immediately get acquainted with the director of Victorinox Swiss Army, Joel Tyrinantsi. The head of the brand of Swiss watches and knives, which buyers of America and Japan pray for, asks how things are going with the patriarchy in Russia and how the revolution in Ukraine is progressing. Young designers Andrea Kammarosano and Munzu Kwon, buyers of Russian stores Code7 and Fott, and editors of Indian and French GQ are having dinner nearby. All of them gathered in Florence to sell / buy / explore new collections and determine where the fashion for men will move in 2014 over the next five days. How does this happen? This time Pitti was visited by 30,000 people, and according to the analyst of the exhibition’s general director Raffaello Napoleone, two thirds of all visitors are buyers. Pitti is a business event where deals are made (purchases of clothes are made) or they simply dictate what things will appear in stores in six months. In the colors, shapes and textures that Pitti buyers chose, a good half of the familiar guys who went further than H & M and Topman will dress. Do not forget about the collection of men's fashion weeks, which begin just after Pitti, but we are ready to argue that the Givenchy and Lanvin catwalk exits from our friends will have less success than the New Balance model, dedicated to “Trick 22”, khaki jeans Fred Perry or shirt Paul with prints that mimic butterflies and ties.
Pitti brings together brands of different styles and prices, from Barena to Desigual, and it is here that you can see how different a fashion can be. All brands are divided into semantic pavilions. The first includes traditional brands like Aquascutum, Hardy Amies and Lardini, which specialize in shirts and suits and follow the traditions of British or Italian tailor craftsmanship, in the second - young promising designers from Sasha Kanevsky and Tigran Avetisyan to Six Lee, in the third - outerwear manufacturers , Barbour and Woolrich. Particularly interesting are the pavilions called Touch. These were selected brands that make modern men's clothing in a slightly eclectic style. You can find good old Diemme shoes and almost unfamiliar names, for example, soft knitwear from Asia, Masaki Kyoko, or massive seamless Knitbrary sweaters. On Pitti there is also a place for women’s brands: they have the Pitti W Pavilion - almost a separate trade show. However, the women's buyer's season has not yet begun, and traditionally the women’s part doesn’t come to Pitti, so getting an order for a women's brand here is a success.
Arranging catwalk shows in Florence, when Milan Fashion Week starts in a couple of days, is illogical, but designers always make an exception for Pitti - after all, they will gather all the necessary public. The debut collection of men's clothing by Andreas Melbostad for Diesel Black Gold took place here, to which a part of the buyers and the press delivered a private plane from London after the autumn-winter show Burberry. If you believe Melbostad, the guys in the next six months will wear tight leather jackets and coats, hung with metal badges, black shiny leather trousers, and - our favorite part - completely white bows, which complement khaki parks especially well. The men's collection of Italian Alessandro Dell'Aqua, designer number 21, was demonstrated in the library. There, atypical for guys, satin bombers and sweatshirts for a pair with lace pants and socks with crystals looked the way. Radically from Melbostad and Delle 'Aqua, the vision of Italian Haitian Stella Jean is different. She takes classic suits and robes as a basis and adds prints originally from West Africa. Perhaps such a motley men's clothing will be difficult to sell, but Giorgio Armani, who financially supports Jean, believes in the success of the girl.
Street photographers, led by Tommy Ton and Scott Schumann, are now influencing the way they dress. They have long become an integral part of fashion, as the designers themselves, collections and shows. There are as many of them on Pitti as in New York or Milan. Why do they fly to little Florence for some five days? The mentioned Tommy Ton, the author of Jak & Jil and the photographer of GQ and Style.com, thinks that here people are dressed much more interesting than in capitals. “Here I’ll take a picture of those guys I’ll not see in London or Paris. All retail is going to Pitti, and people are focused on little-known brands,” he says to Business of Fashion. That, in fact, is true: Florence attracts those guys who form the taste of the masses of people, such as Nick Wooster, and those who wear familiar clothes like Givenchy sweatshirts with prints, here there are only a few against hundreds of guys who skillfully combine the costumes of the perfect cut shirts and flowered socks. This is, of course, a traditional bow with Pitti, which is becoming caricatured. But we notice that it is evolving. For example, this season, men at the exhibition experimented with a combination of classic and casual: they put on inflated vests over suits and wore trousers with arrows in the style of jeans with a simple camouflage jacket and boots on a rather massive sole. Remember.
