Pitti Uomo 104 is in the books! Last week in Florence, I was one of about 17,000 visitors, admiring the collections on display by the 825 exhibitors and enjoying the company of all the rest.
This June’s Pitti was slightly different for me than the past three I’ve been to. While I still did most of what I always do—shooting some street style, photographing the booths, interviewing people I meet along the way—I was also engaged with Amsterdam-based Atelier Munro on photo shoots for an upcoming marketing campaign of theirs, which will feature me. Because of that, on two mornings during the show I was busy with their crew, posing in various spots around the medieval city. There was also a mishap with our luggage and with the flights of our photographer and videographer (talented freelancers Mounir Raji and Milan Van Dril respectively), setting us back about a day on our planned schedule.
Overall, it was still a great week as always. Check out all my Instagram interviews on my page, which will include street style photos, interviews and pics of what I wore. I’ll also be publishing a style breakdown for my own outfits here on the blog in the coming days. But for now, read on for a day by day recap of my time there.
Day 1, Tuesday
The crowd at the fair on Tuesday, day one, felt thin to me. I had no clothes save for what I had worn on the plane, but I went straight to the Fortezza anyhow to see whom I could see. I immediately ran into Torsten from Denmark, who writes Sartorial Notes, and we chatted while we both photographed attendees arriving at the fair right outside the main gate. Torsten’s a bona fide expert on classic menswear, with a refined style his own that favors quality and classic silhouettes. He’s a super gentleman as well. After we got a coffee together at the press room, we went our separate ways and I started doing my one-on-one informal video interviews.
My time was cut short, as I got word from my guys at Munro—Joachim Baan their creative director, and Chris Van Veghel their senior brand officer—that our luggage had thankfully arrived at the airport and we needed to go get it. So we went to the airport, but it was a four-hour process of trying to convince them to actually give it to us. They insisted it must be cleared by customs, but they would give no clear timeframe within which that would happen. So Joachim chipped away at them, going back and forth from the lost & found desk to the customs desk until finally, out of exasperation, the customs desk sent an email to allowed us to get it.
It was nice to have clothes, though it had wasted about half a day dealing with airport bureaucracy. Mounir and Milan were scheduled to arrive sometime around 5pm (a full day after their original itinerary), so our tentative plan was to make up a shoot we had planned for Tuesday morning that evening around sunset. Unfortunately their arrival time kept getting pushed as delays mounted, so we had to scrap it.
That gave me time to stick around the parties a bit longer, however, beginning with Yolanda Edwards’ YOLO magazine summer issue launch party co-hosted by Ancient Greek Sandals to promote their new men’s collection, held at Caffé Royal, just down the street from the Fortezza. I met some new people and finally had a chance to do a brief interview with Yolanda herself as well as Matt Hranek her husband.
Next I headed to Robert Spangle’s Afghan Style book launch and Neapolitan Sartoria Caracciolo-made menswear collection party. Robert’s book is gorgeous and his passion for every single subject he photographed in its pages is remarkable. He partnered with Caracciolo to introduce his own unique design for a double-breasted suit jacket. The front panel below the bottom buttons has hidden pockets sewn into the back where you can put your phone or wallet; you can access it because the is a vertical slit, in essence making the front panel a vent. Those slits also make it easy to reach into your trouser pockets without having to lift up the jacket’s skirt, too. This jacket design is one he himself wears (I interviewed him about it in January).
After that was the party held at Palazzo Buttini Gattai by Plaza Uomo magazine and co-hosted by Montecore and Stenström’s. It’s a beautiful palazzo with a magnificent central courtyard. They serve hors-doeuvres and prosecco. I met Ellie from tailoring company Mond of Copenhagen, whom I had corresponded with some months ago about their store opening. She and I commiserated about the challenges of running a content strategy, and she took a wonderful photo of me with Andreas Weinås.
After the party, I found a dinner spot with Charley Marcuse (whom I’d known via Twitter and Styleforum) and Andre Fayad (who runs the handmade custom clothier Fayad & Co in Miami). We went to the Fiddler’s Elbow off Piazza Santa Maria Novella afterward, and ran into Mark Cho on the way. The Irish pub was packed, though we didn’t know anybody there, and it was well after midnight, so I went back to my hotel, as I was meeting Munro for a 6:30a.m. shoot the next morning.
Day 2, Wednesday
I got up at 5:30, met the guys from Munro at the Uffizi gallery at 6:30, and we started shooting around 6:45. It was an all-morning shoot, lasting until about 2:30. It was nice to see Mounir and Milan again after their flight delays; I had bonded with them during the five days prior when they came to Cincinnati to photograph me there, and we road-tripped all together to Nashville, our second photo location. They’d met my children and wife when they picked me up to leave on our trip, and we’d shared meals together. Chris van Veghel also conducted the interview with me that will form the basis of the profile they will write of me for the campaign.
We were finally finished at 2:30 and I headed straight to the Fortezza to see what was happening. I learned later that this day, Wednesday, was the busiest day of the fair. Unlike day one, it was swarming with people. So that was nice to hear. I ran into Charley, and we wandered the fair. We saw a few booths and met some people (namely Liverano which is launching a ready to wear collection, and Walker Slater of Scotland), but it was soon time to leave to make it to the 27 parties scheduled that night. Unfortunately, it started raining in a downpour. We walked back to my hotel to wait out the rain for a bit before heading to the WM Brown magazine party, co-headlined by Breitling and Stile Latino. As always, and in this case despite the rain, it was a highlight of the week. Matt and Yolanda know how to throw a party. A big band playing live music (with whom he always sings at least one song), super great venue (Harry’s Bar “The Garden” at Sina Villa Medici), flowing drinks and an atmosphere of welcoming. There’s no guest list at the door.
I made several new connections there, including with Prasan of Original Madras Trading Co., Manish Puri aka @the_daily_mirror and Brit Bones aka @incaseofbrit. Despite the rain, the atmosphere was on-point.
Soon it was time to leave. As part of my collaboration with Munro, I was invited to co-host a dinner with them and we created a guest list of around 20-25 people. The dinner was co-hosted by Atelier Munro, myself and Clayton Chambers aka Sprezza, also a Nashville native who writes a Substack newsletter on menswear. We got a great group together for a memorable dinner. Following was the rooftop party of Munro Tailoring (the mother company, which manufactures private-label made-to-measure clothing for many brands all over the world; Atelier Munro is their newer customer-facing brand).
I’m sure people stayed out after that party ended at around midnight, but I went back to the hotel because I had another 5:30 alarm set for the next morning.
Day 3, Thursday
Once again I met the team at 6:30, ready to shoot. Today’s shoot was much shorter, however, wrapping up around 9am. We finished, said our goodbyes to Mounir and Milan, who headed for the airport, and I headed back to the Fortezza.
This time I had more time to do the typical Pitti thing as I’ve come to know it—I wandered the booths, chatted with brands, shot some street style, ate the press lunch, got my photo taken a bunch, interviewed people, and made new connections. That afternoon, I let myself relax a bit and joined Erik Mannby, Andreas Klow and some others at their hotel pool. My feet were killing me from walking so much and it was super nice to just chill, swim a bit and hang with the boys.
After pool time, I went with Andreas and Erik to join Michelle Free and Andy Poupart at the rooftop bar at the Westin Excelsior hotel. It was lovely, with gorgeous views and nice company. Afterwards, we went to Alexander Kraft’s party, co-headlined by EGM Cigars. Kraft sells his own line of menswear, which he was promoting, plus his own magazine dedicated to his lifestyle. The venue for the party was unreal—the type of glorious Florentine evening dreams are made of. Gorgeous evening light in a beautiful garden; a cool crowd of people, a gracious host showing off his luxurious car collection and drinks flowing from the bar. I met and had a wonderful conversation with Kate and Daniele who run the brand Antoniella Apparel, an accessories company that I’m paying a lot of attention to currently.
My friends were heading to a party hosted by J.Mueser and Maximillian Mogg across the city, so we left for that. It was a bit of a trek (everything in Florence is walkable, but the walk is usually about 20 minutes), and the scene there was just about the opposite of the scene we’d left—it was on a crowded street just outside Alimentari Mario, where it was hosted, and loud club music was playing by another venue across the street. Many of the same people of course were there, having commuted from one party to the other as I did, but the vibe was a complete 180.
After a bit of that, I walked with my friends to Il Profeta, for a now-traditional meal held by the group of friends affectionately called the “Peasants,” for our jokingly inferior status to Henrik Hjerl who is actual nobility in Denmark. It’s always a nice meal with nice people.
Day 4, Friday + the weekend
Friday at Pitti is infamously slow, as many people leave for Milan Fashion Week. The booths are all still set up but the show is pretty dead. Nonetheless it’s still nice to wander around and see who you’ll see—the hectic pace of the early days of the show over, you can connect a bit deeper with people you meet. I once again met up with Charley and we got some superb gelato (La Sorbetteria, which has 3 locations), then ate dinner at Cammillo (it’s a Pitti-famous spot just over the river). On the walk back, we ran into Vassilis Bourtsalas of the store Bespoke Athens. He regaled us with an oral history of Pitti going back to 2004; the rise and fall of the show as it was known then, its resurrection after Scott Schumann and Leon magazine came to photograph on the streets, and its uncertain future with a new cast of characters without a lead.
Saturday, I took it easy and slept in. Charley and I met up for a glass of prosecco with George Wang who owns Brio Beijing. We had a nice chat, and afterwards I wandered the streets a bit more. That evening I found some dinner alone, and in the morning took the flight home.
Concluding thoughts
While my personal experience of Pitti was different from prior trips, the warmth of the community carries on as before. Chris from AM noticed it and commented on that, as a first-time visitor to Pitti, it was such a community, so different from the Milan or Paris fashion weeks he’d attended in the past. As I navigate this community and push forward to wherever it is I’m going, I’m honored to have made so many connections and met so many wonderful people.
Hope to see you at Pitti 105!
