My Existential Crisis At Pitti Uomo: A Diary

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tuesday Afternoon

Pitti Uomo in person versus Pitti Uomo on the Internet are two totally different monsters. Within the well-heeled walls of the Fortezza da Basso, it actually feels like a true menswear convention. This is Comic Con for dorks who argue over whether Lardini or L.B.M. makes better Casentino coats. It's Coachella for guys who stopped liking Boglioli when the family who owned it sold the company to an Italian private equity fund. It is fashion nerd central and I was absolutely giddily in the thick of it.

Checking in literally felt like entering a different world. You had to scan your badge, upon which the automated gate would turn from red to green and grant you access to menswear mecca. It's equal parts overwhelming and underwhelming. While it's easy to get caught up in the spectacle of it all— there are ginormous booths and really expensive installations that beckon for your attention—any seasoned enthusiast knows the good stuff is usually hiding in plain sight, not within one of the gaudy Trojan horses.

Oh yeah, and what about the famed "Pitti Wall"? It's wildly smaller in person and it isn’t even really a fucking wall if I'm being completely honest. It's more of a central hub where people tend to congregate, but I guess "Pitti Hub" doesn't really have the same ring to it.

Tuesday Continued

Liberty Fairs had a small section of American brands like Filson, Billy Reid and Oak Street Bootmakers on display amongst the Italian tailoring. What caught my eye immediately were a pair of blacked out, ripple sole Paraboot moccasins made for Palmer Trading Co., a SoHo New York-based shop I'd been to maybe once. It was then that I saw my first real Good Thing™ of the fair, a doublefaced Japanese wool overcoat from Palmer Trading Co.'s new in-house line by designer Willy Chavarria. It reminded me of everything I love about Acne's Charles Coat: an unstructured, oversized body with generous welt pockets at the side, and the fact that it looked like you could fall asleep in it, wake up nine hours later and go about the following day wearing the same exact thing.

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.

Tuesday Evening

Tuesday night's dinner was FUCKING LIT. That's really the only way I can describe it. See, pne of the main events of Pitti Uomo is the Brunello Cucinelli dinner, which I was fortunate enough to have been invited to. Cucinelli rented out the Palazzo Corsini, a Baroque-style palace full of frescoes, sculptures, chandeliers with actual candles in them and, apparently, one of Florence's most prestigious private art collections. I learned a bit about how a lot of these properties belonged to actual counts and royal families, who now had to subsidize their incomes by selling or renting out portions of their lavish estates.

I wasn't really paying attention to all that though because there was a guy slicing fresh prosciutto from a pig carcass and putting the slabs on my plate. Next to him, someone else was poaching quail eggs and putting them—yolks and all—on top of heaping spoonfuls of steak tartare. And when I thought that was it, the coup de grace: freshly shaved tartufo on top. Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

I didn't know if my appetite would survive to dinner, but somehow it did. Between glasses of rosé, I caught up with Austin Wong, another recovering menswear blogger doing his damnedest to become legit. Currently, he works for Cucinelli in Shanghai and is still super nerdy about clothes. Dinner was served and it was marvelous. First came mushroom ravioli, followed by risotto and a steak so rare I could practically feel every sinew with each chew. Since Italian dinners last approximately six and a half hours, I couldn't stay for dessert, since I was really full and was supposed to meet up with some friends because I am a popular guy.

Late As Fuck Tuesday Night/Super Early Morning Wednesday, January 14th

After dinner, I met some friends at Gilli. What I did not know is that Gilli is the Editor Bar™ of Florence and is now the go-to spot party spot to end all go-to party spots. Everyone is always there there, from certified street style legends like Bruce Pask, Eugene Tong, and Josh Peskowitz, to Taiwanese bloggers getting serious guap, to the CSC guys, to "LMAO WTF am I doing here?" fish out of water types like myself. Noah J even convinced the blogfather, Michael Williams, to come out, and when the cool dads are at the bar you know shit is legit. We're talking three or four generations of #menswear at one bar.

It's here, in places like this, where you just get to really nerd out and have real conversation with people whose careers you've always followed from afar. Knowledge gets dropped and you exchange ideas about media and fashion with people who are much smarter than you will ever be. There's a reason that English menswear publications are just plain better than American ones and it’s because they have the ability to carry a true, global conversation.

Don't get me wrong, America is dope, but we often get caught up in the idea that we are the nucleus of a cultural universe when really we're one thread in a knot whose fibers are only growing tighter. That realization made me want to do a better job as someone whose day-to-day varies between being a critic and arbiter of culture because I know there are many times when I have utterly blown it.

Wednesday Morning

I slept in for a bit and took the morning to hit up the Galleria dell'Accademia, where I saw the statue of David amongst other legedary Renaissance-era art before heading back to the Fortezza to visit some of the booths I hadn't had a chance to see the day before.

Wednesday Afternoon

One of my favorite new things to see was a brand called The Gigi, the new company from Boglioli brothers Mario and Pierluigi, whose "Gigi" nickname became the new label's official moniker. Starting from the fabric, plenty of the pieces had the unstructured, easy-wearing appeal of Boglioli, but in bananas colorways and materials like a bouclé square-pattern that appeared on a double breasted topcoat, or a vertical block stripe shawl collar coat that would make Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat jealous.

As far as menswear trends go, tailored clothing will never really go away. Despite the persistence of streetwear, brands like Barena, The Gigi and Harris Wharf London still manage to put out covetable gear that demands a place in the modern man's closet. While I may not buy a full suit anytime soon, I could definitely find a place for a single-pleated, off white moleskin trouser or one of Barena’s many unstructured coats. These days, it's more about mixing it up than ever, and men really haven't had that unfettered freedom to get messy and see what works. Style is more often than not a work in progress, except it's never really complete. Sometimes it takes a trip to Florence to remember that fact.

Wednesday Evening

Later that night I headed back to the Palazzo Corsini, where up-and-coming Italian menswear designer Andrea Incontri presented his Fall/Winter 2015 collection. My two favorite looks were this fishtail parka and bomber jacket made of the same printed fabric. It reminded me of Dries in a way and both pieces here had double zips, so that makes them pretty much Four Pins-approved in case anyone wanted to be a dick about it in the comments.

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.

Thursday, January 15th

On my last day, I spent the morning at the fair trying to make sure I got to see the brands I really wanted to connect with and, of course, ate plenty of gelato at the press restaurant. I had to go back to the HBA villa for a few hours for another article I'm working on, but made it back to downtown Florence in time for Cloakroom, a performance by Tilda Swinton and Olivier Saillard at the Teatro della Pergola.

Saillard, a fashion critic, museum director and part-time troll, once again collaborated with Swinton, actual unicorn rendered in the flesh, on the hour-or-so long piece, which consisted of volunteers in the audience handing her items you'd traditionally leave in a coat check—jackets, scarves, hats, and gloves—and let Tilda Swinton sort of just run with it. She licked lapels, writhed on the table, stuck her head inside more than a few coats and threw one on as if it were a life preserver.

On the one hand, I could go on about how this piece is meant to highlight the relationship between us and our clothes and the hidden stories they tell, but on the other, I honestly felt like it was a bit longer than it needed to be. Once the show ended, everyone rushed out to make it to Marni's first runway show in 5 years, held at the Museo Marinio Marini. Models walked past the Italian sculptors many equestrian-themed works and some of Marini's F/W 15 circus figures didn't look too out of place amidst the madness.

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.

Parting Thoughts

I didn’t sleep that night. I stayed up and caught up on my RSS feed, reading about the shows I'd missed and all things Gucci-related. Seeing how the cultural commentators and fashion people whose work I admire operate during the busiest time of the year only reminded me that I could always do better and, well, that I clearly need to. Fashion month and trade shows like Pitti Uomo isn't all press dinners and open bars and it's far from playing dress up with a bunch of other nerds. It's ground zero for the early adoption of the abstract ideas and far out notions that will eventually inform the global conversation about clothes. It's what we do.