Last week I had the opportunity to attend my very first Pitti Uomo, something I have been looking forward to since the very moment I found out Pitti Uomo existed, so, like, seven years ago? This season marked the 87th Pitti Uomo complete with featured designer Shayne Oliver of Hood By Air, which is the primary reason I got to go for work in the first place.
In case it wasn't obvious enough already, Pitti Uomo is by and large the best menswear trade show on the planet and just so happens to be the street style capital of the world when it comes to bearded dudes in suits. I came, I saw, I got sonned every step of the way by industry veterans who are killing it way more than I ever will. But, hey, at least I learned a lot.
1. pitti-lead
2. duomo
Early Morning Monday, January 12th
I arrived in Frankfurt from JFK around 5:30 in the morning CET, six hours ahead of my beloved Eastern Time zone. The layover to my connecting flight lasted about an hour, so I tried to work in a quick nap to no avail. Since it would only take an hour or so to get to Florence, I decided I just wouldn’t be sleeping until later that night. My travel buddy by default was Noah Johnson, the Narc Dad himself, current Deputy Editor of Style.com and the guy who was temerarious enough to first bring me on as a Staff Writer at Complex many years ago and even helped found the very site you're currently reading. We ended up being booked on the same flight and the same hotel, so for better or worse (read: worse), he was stuck with me.
Since I default to him when it comes to touristy things in The Old World, we checked into our charming yet spacious hotel then decided to check out some of the local museums, namely the Uffizi and Galleria dell'Accademia, which were both closed since it was a Monday. The Duomo, however, was open, so after admiring the exterior and getting off the requisite 'grams, we checked out the inside.
3. santamaria
Monday Afternoon/Evening
While wandering the streets we found one of the outposts for the Farmacia SS Annunziata and I ended up leaving with some rosewater and some gingko biloba hair oil. Next stop was the famed Officina Profumo Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, home of the ridiculously expensive, but amazingly scented Tabacco Tascano soap bar, amongst other things. The interior felt like one of those old school apothecaries you would find in a Final Fantasy game where you could freely spend your hard-earned Gil restocking on Phoenix Downs and Turbo Ethers.
As night slowly crept behind us, we actually went into some of the stores Lawrence recommended in his OG Sartorially Inclined "Florence Shopping Guide." The ones that held up despite it being written a digital lifetime ago? Boggi and Gutteridge, which offered similar aesthetics at different pricepoints, with a noticeable difference in quality. Both of those brands are places where guys can "get the Pitti look," but real heads would know the higher-end labels that inspired certain pieces. Peluso, despite a glowing LAS recommendation, was trash. Milord and Frasi we didn't get to, but WP Lavori was as good as expected, though there wasn't much there we couldn’t find in New York. There's a brand new Margaret Howell store that just opened too.
We regrouped with the rest of our motley Pitti crew and had dinner La Cucina del Garga, a place whose kitschy decorations belie the quality of the food. I won't be one of those people and just say dinner was fucking dope, and after a few nightcaps, I went to sleep incredibly slumped.
4. SONY DSC
Tuesday Morning, January 13th
First things first, I got a doppio at the café on the corner from my hotel. Italian coffee culture is so lit. It is the closest thing to having crushed beans mixed with water intravenously delivered to your brain. I worked in a coffee shop for three years, but have never appreciated the simplicity of the double espresso until now, in Florence, getting my swag Eat, Pray, Love on.
Before heading to the Fortezza da Basso, the site of Pitti Uomo since the dawn of man, I attended the opening ceremony of Pitti Uomo at the Palazzo Vecchio. There was a lot of talking and non-Italian speakers such as myself were afforded headsets so we could listen to the translator on some real United Nations type shit. I was seated next to Susanna Lau of Style Bubble fame, who graciously offered to let me use her WiFi hotspot so I could catch up on work e-mails like a nerd. Then, it was off to Pitti proper, the sprawling wonderland of menswear I honestly was not even remotely prepared for.
5. pitti-wall
6. willy-chavarria
7. IMG_4597-381x572
Yup, Still Tuesday
The best part about coming to Pitti as part of a press trip was that I got to eat at the press restaurant, which is an amazing buffet that changes each day and where you can have as much gelato and tiramisu as your slowly dying heart desires. No lie, I got two servings of gelato each time, though I don't think I really need to do any convincing for you to believe me. The seating arrangement at the press restaurant is kind of like Mean Girls, except with fashion people and pretty much every table is the cool Asian table. The street style photographers had their territory—Tommy Ton sat next to Youngjun Koo and H.B. Nam—and Japanese buyers flocked together. I sat with the press and PR people I came with, and right behind us sat the StyleForum people. Not saying that denotes any particular social ranking or anything, but Fok from StyleForum had a Razor scooter, so that by default made him the coolest person in the room.
After lunch, I hung out in the central hub of the action for a bit, shooting the shit with the guys from Carson Street, Gentry and meeting various new faces. It felt a lot like the first homecoming game of the school year where you're more focused on catching up with people than the football for the first few minutes. Justin Dean from Gentry had already seen a lot of stuff and was fucking killing it in a patchwork jacket from Rare Weaves (seen above) that was literally worth more than the entirety of what I'd spent on clothes in 2014. He graciously offered to be my Pitti spirit guide and lead me away from the trash and towards menswear nirvana.
Pitti is a very Euro trade show in the sense that it's divided into random sections that may or may not have anything to do with the brands showcased within them. The main action is in the central building where everything from Brunello Cucinelli to Ghurka to Lardini (and Woost God's collaborative collection) is under one roof. Younger brands like LaRose Paris, Harris Wharf London, Filling Pieces and Barena are in a section inexplicably called "Touch!", and labels like Camoshita, G. Ingelese, Camo and Alden sat in a section named "Futuro", which is kind of weird since they're not really that futuristic, but whatever. I'm sure it's a real bitch trying to figure out where to house approximately eleventy million brands.
8. brunello-dinner
9. gilli
10. david
11. the-gigi
12. incontri
13. hba
Late NIght Wednesday
The other main event of Pitti Uomo 87 was Hood By Air’s special collection as the guest designers. I put it into context over on Complex, but it really solidified Shayne Oliver as a true talent.
We piled into shuttle buses that drove us 25 minutes out of town to the Villa di Maiano, where HBA had taken over the back terrace and erected a makeshift runway cum dance floor. The clothes were a definite departure for the brand and when I got to see them backstage it was evident that HBA's new Milanese manufacturing had given the brand a real opportunity to step its game up.
Oliver took the notion of "playing" and "experimentation" in this collection quite literally, making earrings and rings with children's marbles embedded in them. Those fake lashes sported by some of the models? That was meant to reflect the pastoral nature of the villa, since the lashes were fashioned after a lamb's. Hood By Air is definitely not the fashion equivalent of easy listening, but it is the kind of boundary-pushing label that, in ten or so years' time, people might look back on and think. "Wow, they were really prescient."
That's sort of the risk fashion people (and music people) take when they choose to laud a band or designer. You risk being wrong if the longevity doesn't pan out, becomes victim to terrible business decisions or some other unpredictable malarkey. Fashion nerds really just long to be early adopters of the next big thing and mentally hand everyone else their late pass when they finally come around to how awesome something is. But in a nutshell, it's telling that Shayne Oliver isn't willing to compromise on his trademark brand of gender bending in a political climate where ISIS is throwing allegedly gay men to their deaths.
14. tilda
15. mcdonalds
Late Night Thursday
My last night in Florence was spent eating dinner at L’Osteria di Giovanni, where I met Anders Christian Madsen from i-D and we totally geeked out over Dries Van Noten for a solid 20 minutes. Then, of course, I wanted to spend my last few hours hanging out with dudes I knew, so I ended up at Gilli again, where it seemed just about everyone was out for their own Florentine swan song.
While in attendance were headed to Milan the morning after, I was not. I ended up hanging with a few new faces I'd gotten to know since touching down in Italy, like Satoshi Nabori of Sasquatchfabrix and Blackmeans, Susanna Lau of Style Bubble and a few of her friends from Hong Kong. Appropriately, we ended up at one of the only 24-hour eateries in Florence at the crack of dawn: McDonald’s. One Crispy McBacon later and I was already getting myself re-accustomed to America.
16. empty-street
