On and off the catwalk, rules at Italy’s men’s fashion shows are relaxing
Florence and Milan offered a new laid-back take on summer dressing, says Stephen Doig
We haven’t seen this sort of blind devotion since the early pilgrimages to Lourdes: in the middle of a Florentine heatwave, a man is wearing a three-piece suit – a wool suit, with matching wool waistcoat underneath – with a shirt, tie, weighty monk straps and, wait for it, the crowning glory of a felt hat. The mercury was tipping 31 degrees. A medical emergency could not have been far off.
It’s testament to the religious zeal of the Pitti Peacocks, a be-coiffed and besuited breed that migrates twice a year to the Pitti Uomo men’s fashion fair. Even in sweltering Italian climes their plumage consists of heavy suits, done-up shirts, hard leather shoes and – in many instances – a hat. Of course, it’s a microcosm that doesn’t exist in the real world, but the Florence Pitti Uomo and its bigger, flashier older brother, Milan Fashion Week Men’s, both raised the question of how men should dress in summer. Because while the Pitti spectacle is done for theatricality and effect (and to ensure they’re dutifully photographed and featured on street style blogs, which is the Peacock’s main stock-in-trade), it’s also clearly affected, and dare I say it, a tad dated.
A case in point; I bumped into the ever-stylish Wei Koh, founder of men’s style title The Rake and no stranger to a serious suit, while strolling through the Boboli Gardens, extolling the virtues of his new relaxed stance in tobacco-shaded shirts – tucked in for extra sprezzatura (a nonchalance of attitude in Italian) points – and backless leather shoes. Polished, slick but easy, none of the achingly to-attention collars and structured
While the Pitti spectacle is done for theatricality, it’s also a tad dated
blazers of the posturing exotic birds up the road.
Lightness and ease were also on the mind of Clare Waight Keller, the Givenchy designer who upped sticks and moved her bi-annual men’s showcase to Florence, tasking the house’s research and development department with creating a series of lighter-than-air technical fabrics that aped traditional ones. A kayak jacket with the appearance of velvet was actually made of nylon that gave it a
lustrous surface, while a series of jackets and macs came in flyaway, airy materials that parlayed into the suits. They drew on a slender Nineties silhouette but Waight Keller ensured that the fabrics
– silks and sleek nylons – kept things light as air.
A nifty train journey up to Milan – allowing only a longing glimpse of the Parco Tosco-emiliano National
Park, which leads to the spellbinding Cinque Terre – and it was a similar story, refinement today means a relaxed stance as opposed to anything painfully done up.
“We don’t wear suits the same way,” said the ever-questioning Alessandro Sartori of Italian tailoring institution Ermenegildo Zegna. “We worked with our mills to finesse a process whereby nylon is used but in a much lighter, more dynamic way,” he explained, pointing to a boxy suit blazer so fine that it could double as a shirt, or a new proposal combining a blazer with a flowing pair of trousers.
One curious footnote, quite literally, to this emphasis on the relaxation of Italian style is the new footwear rule book. Once the Italian playboy would have not stepped out along the Portofino promenade without his loafers, as ubiquitous as his crisp white shirt and slicked-back hair. But now he’s branched beyond the glossy, creaky crocodile into more organic territory. Salvatore Ferragamo staged a show in the shadow of Michelangelo’s David, and alongside the chalky-toned shorts and soft-fit summer jackets were some extremely covetable espadrilles with chunky woven soles, in shades of saffron and sand – add to a relaxed suit for a summer lunch and you’ll look a lot less trussed up.
Brunello Cucinelli stepped out of his steady cashmere contingent to introduce a first – a sporty trainer made in a light wool yarn, and loafers designed with a spring in their step,
literally, the sole is fully bendable and pliable, easy to throw into a carry-on bag and go. The solidity and chunkiness has been taken out of men’s footwear in favour of something more dynamic, particularly in boiling heat.
And if proof were needed that uptight and upright is a thing of the past, one need only look at the front row of Dolce & Gabbana’s Sartoria show, a second showcase alongside their main show that celebrates the might and prowess of the Dolce & Gabbana tailoring atelier. And the clients – who fly in from across the world (private jet as standard) to write their shopping lists, one of whom nestled his chihuahua puppy in a velvet pouch on his lap so she could take in the show – were a litmus test of how the 0.1 per cent is dressing today – the pristine suits and collared shirts were done away with in favour of smoking jackets and robed coats.
The brand responded in kind with a series of soft suits where pyjama tops replaced more structured jackets, and, in one instance, took the idea of a 19th-century opera coat and blew up the volumes, the sleeves were plumped out and the cut voluminous. Of course, few are going to require a wafting opera coat next summer, but the message that formality is no longer the stuff of starch and strong shoulders is there all the same, particularly in Italy, when it has traditionally meant the full kit-and-caboodle of machismo tailoring.
Whether our Pitti Peacock in his wool hat was treated for dehydration, we do not know. But what’s clear from this new interpretation of Italian men’s style is that there’s a host of summer dressing for a more laid-back man, should the poor chap come around from the heat exhaustion. An airy suit and some espadrilles please, nurse.