Dispatch from Pitti Uomo
People, places, and style takeaway from this month’s menswear trade show in Florence
I had always admired Pitti (the bi-annual menswear trade show in Florence) from afar. For several years as a men’s style editor at Condé Nast Traveler, I’d go to the shows in London and Milan, but I always thought that Pitti was more my jam. Not only because I’d loved Florence ever since I first went there as a student in the late 80s, but because Pitti seemed more like stylish inclusive boys club than exclusive fashion world. I finally went to Pitti for the first time in 2015 for a Condé Nast Traveler story, where I was the editor on a story photographing some of the leading menswear characters at the fair.
I loved it immediately. It was the complete opposite of the Milan shows I’d gone to, where I often felt out of place. The Pitti gang was warm, inviting, and focused much more on community and practical dressing. It was filled with characters that I really connected with, and of course, Florence being the birthplace of the Negroni–win-win!
I knew I wanted Wm Brown to have some kind of presence there, so for the first issue, with my menswear muse Gerardo Cavaliere on the cover, it seemed like the perfect place to have a launch party. We booked the upstairs room at the original Harry's Bar, expecting 40 to 50 people, but word spread, and hundreds of people ended up coming–with the bar so packed they spilled out onto the street. The final bill had hundreds of Negronis on it (and was 10x over budget!) —but it was so exciting to see so many people there, and ultimately, the perfect way to launch the magazine. I even ended up framing the receipt as a trophy of sorts, because to me that night was probably the best investment I could have made in terms of amplifying my magazine to the menswear community.
