Pitti Punks and Sun-Bleached Dunks

Ciao ragazzi and bonjour from sweltering Europe, where I’m perspiring my way through the men’s fashion weeks. Below, a recap of what went down at the 110th edition of Pitti Uomo, and my take on the recent news that Nigo’s Human Made is acquiring Jun Takahashi’s Undercover.

“I have a dinner to go to later and I don’t have time to change,” a Japanese editor friend told me at breakfast during Pitti, no matter that it was human body temperature outside on the streets of Florence. Fashion is an endurance sport!

I resigned myself to a T-shirt and shorts for the bulk of the men’s trade show, and could only admire the mettle of the people who actually turned it out. Still, though conversation throughout the week was mostly reduced to “pffttt it’s boiling” and “what time’s your flight out of here?”, there were plenty of interesting clothes to see.

A FORCE FROM ABOVE

While everyone else at Pitti was grumbling about the sun, designer Jiyong Kim had harnessed its power to make beautiful clothes. The Seoul-based designer was a special guest at Pitti this season, and uses sun-bleaching to create unique patterns on his clothes. He rents land in a secret location in Korea where he hangs fabrics on fences and lets the daylight do the rest.

Kim held an exhibition that featured 35 coats that showed, in increments, the effects of time the fabric had spent outdoors. Also notable is his ongoing collaboration with Puma; at Pitti he debuted a new iteration of the Geo Cell 1, inspired by decaying paper.

PUNKS OF ALL KINDS

The headliner of the week was Simone Rocha, who showed her first standalone men’s collection on stage at the Teatro della Pergola. It was the effete take on menswear that Rocha is known for, this time featuring backless blazers framed with white lace, broderie anglaise shirts, and ballet slippers decorated with pearls, woven in with complications of layered gingham and ruched tailoring. “It feels tender but I also think it feels quite grounded. I wanted there to be a beauty, but also a realism to the proposal,” said Rocha during a preview.

I’ve read some hot takes wondering why her menswear needed a separate show, and that the designer could have just woven it in with her womenswear as usual. But in the context of Pitti, where traditionally masculine tailoring rules, it was good to see something transgressive and flouncy. A little tenderness? That’s punk, too.

Comme des Garcons’ Kei Ninomiya, mostly known for his avant-garde womenswear, also held his first menswear runway show. Dover Street Market has set him the task of designing its in-house label, which is now in its third season and is a way for the department store to capitalise on its cultural clout. The show took place at 10pm (!) in the dusty construction site of a former Florentine convent, where an army of lads strode out in purple plaid skirts (DSM has designed its own tartan), leather jackets festooned with safety pins, and button-laden tailoring in homage to the British punk Judy Blame.

The seen-it-all-before references made it a relatively toothless representation of punk (and really, how punk can a line by a department store possibly be, anyway?), but it was a joyful one nonetheless, thanks in part to the incredible gravity-defying mohawks that blossomed with flowers. (Fun fact: Ninomiya himself sports a tall black mohawk, and is never seen without it. He even takes flights with it. The story at CDG HQ goes that once during a business trip, a colleague knocked on his hotel room door to see if he would join them for breakfast, and he answered at once, his hair already spiked into the sky.)

The most real punk thing I saw at the fair was William Palmer, the British designer who graduated from CSM just last year and won this year’s I:C Pitti Immagine award, which facilitated him a modest presentation at the fair. Palmer’s collection was partly inspired by the British comedy The Full Monty, and featured neckties flopped out of trouser flies, suits turned into nun’s habits, and shorts that had been tailored so they sported an unsettlingly fat crotch, playing with office dress codes in ways that felt new and actually entertaining. “It’s like a fuck you to capitalism,” the designer said. I couldn’t tell you that any of it was convincingly wearable, but Palmer is still fresh out of the oven, and I’m excited to see what he’ll do when his clothes hit the runway.

BETTER A FRIEND

A few people asked for my thoughts on Nigo’s Human Made acquiring Jun Takahashi’s Undercover. Apart from the fact that Yohji and Rei used to date, Nigo and Jonio represent Japanese fashion’s most heartwarming union! The two go way back to the early nineties, when together they founded the now-defunct Tokyo boutique Nowhere, and subsequently helped birth the Ura-Harajuku scene.

Though both designers have had huge international success, Nigo has made a lot more money. Takahashi’s avant-garde runway shows—from his famous SCAB collection in 2003 to the light-up terrarium dresses twenty years later— have marked him out as the most creative Japanese designer of his generation, whereas Nigo’s streetwear vibe was always more… mass. It culminated in the historic listing of Human Made Inc. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange at the end of last year; its share price has soared 70% in the months since.

So what does it mean now that Nigo is essentially buying out his friend? In recent years, Takahashi has been more and more focused on his surrealist painting, and said that he prefers that to designing. He has also spoken about the financial constraints of showing in Paris, and has pared his men’s shows back to lookbooks in recent seasons. It’s unclear whether Undercover was actually in financial trouble, but maybe a good friend arrived at the right time.

Ultimately, the buyout means that Undercover’s legacy is secured, and both men will die rich enough to build their tombs out of Supreme bricks. We can’t know yet how the deal (which is still yet to be finalised) will impact Undercover’s output, but the point is this: if you must sell out, better to sell out to a friend.

HEAT TECHNOLOGY

• As the summers in Europe become evermore unbearable, sun umbrellas will surely start to become more normalised at fashion week. Surely! This time, the only people I saw using them in Florence were a group of Asian tourists, and menswear icon Nick Wooster, who was dressed entirely in white and told me “I don’t care, I need one in this heat.” My wife Reina swears by them too, and gets hers from Montbell.

• Biggest regret of the season, once more, was not bringing my air-conditioned vest from Hidesign to the shows, because I couldn’t be bothered to pack the battery pack. When will I learn?

• I have no choice but to glaze Jian Deleon, whose consecutive Knicks-themed fits (and blue & orange loafers) stole the week. Less noticed was his secret weapon for the heat: a portable fan from Chinese brand Jisulife.