I'd never heard of Business Insider until my editor asked me to respond to their "mantyhose" trend piece and I haven't thought about them since. That isn’t indicative of Business Insider’s existence or status as an "insider," but more my status as a business outsider. Like most magazines with words such as "business," "fortune," "venture" or "helicopter collector" in the title, there’s always a business-y fashion column because rich dudes, like poor bloggers, need clothes. In this particular video, Business Insider lets us in on some of the strange fashion trends of European men. I was getting ready for a lot of DSquared and satchels, but instead I saw a whole bunch of footage from Pitti and only, like, one satchel.
Yo Business Insider, tailored clothing isn’t a "strange fashion of Europe." It’s called getting dressed up. Grabbing most of your footage from video of Pitti Uomo and saying it’s representative of how actual Europeans dress is like taking footage of a Renaissance Fair in Cleveland and saying that’s how actual people from the Midwest dress. Pitti definitely takes place in Europe, but the dudes that go there don’t dress like anyone ever. Except themselves. If you think the streets of Florence mirror the Fortezza da Basso on those magical weeks twice a year, you are sadly fucking mistaken. When I was in Florence there were a few steezy old dudes shuffling around in suits and shit, but there were also a metric fuck ton of dudes wearing weird bootleg Timbs and acid washed spandex jeans. It’s just like New York. The Sartorialist would love to have you think that everyone in New York is super well-dressed, but if you looked just out of frame of your favorite Scott Schuman photo you’d see a couple dressed head-to-toe in something God threw up arguing about whether or not the line at the whimsical pretzel burger place is too long to be worth it.
Despite picking the craziest place ever to sample European fashion, Business Insider’s take on Pitti is awesome because it’s exactly how your friends and family view your obsession with lapel notches and natural gum soles. Yep, you’re their weird friend—the one "that wears ties for no reason” and "gets a lot of stuff from Europe and hates square toed shoes.” Shout out to Business Insider because the related article to all this is “5 Reasons You Should Rock Shorts In The Office." AND YOU SAY EUROPEANS ARE WEIRD, BUSINESS INSIDER.
