Pitti Uomo is gearing up to launch its next edition.
Slated to run from January 9-12 at Florence’s historic Fortezza da Basso, the Italian menswear trade show will kick off the fall/winter 2024 men’s selling season as the industry still deals a plethora of economic concerns.
As the men’s industry prepares for another in-person fair, see here a roundup of all the events, fashion shows and happenings taking place in Florence this January.
Todd Snyder to Make Runway Return
American menswear designer Todd Snyder will return to the runway in January as Pitti Uomo’s next Designer Showcase.
According to the men’s trade fair, Snyder will present his newest collection in Florence, at the Stazione Leopolda, with a fashion show on Tuesday, Jan. 9.
Snyder said in a statement that he is “incredibly excited” to return to the runway at the next Pitti Uomo.
“As much as I pride myself on being an American designer, I continue to draw so much inspiration from Italian style, and as a company we continue to partner with so many of Italy’s legendary mills,” Snyder said. “I’ve always loved the sense of camaraderie, and the sense of discovery, at Pitti. There is no better place to catch up with old friends and build new relationships as we talk about the best, next steps to expand the Todd Snyder brand globally. My team and I are grateful to Raffaello Napoleone and the entire Pitti Uomo 105 team for this incredible honor.”
“I met Todd Snyder in New York about a year ago, on the occasion of our traditional appointment with the American press and during that long and pleasant conversation we both spontaneously agreed that it would be perfect make his long-awaited return to the catwalk one of the special events of our international men’s fashion and lifestyle event,” Raffaello Napoleone, CEO of Pitti Immagine, added. “But this project is also Pitti’s recognition of a long and brilliant career, characterized by the ability to constantly renew itself in tune with the spirit of the time, remaining faithful to an idea of modern elegance welded to the values of sustainability.”
Based in New York City, Snyder launched his eponymous label in 2011 and has worked to shape the modern American male wardrobe. In addition to being one of the America’s leading menswear designer, Snyder is a trusted partner to other American brands. He has created collaborations with L.L.Bean, Champion, Converse, Timex and New Balance.
Prior to launching his own label, Snyder held leading roles at Ralph Lauren, Gap and J.Crew. He has also been recognized twice by the Council of Fashion Designers of America as a Menswear Designer of the Year nominee and a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist.
Snyder currently operates 14 stores: four located in NYC; one in Los Angeles; one in Miami; one in San Francisco; one in Boston; one in Chicago; one in Washington, D.C.; one in Dallas; one in East Hampton; one in Greenwich, Conn.; and one in Manhasset, N.Y. Snyder is slated to open his next store in Atlanta this fall.
Steven Stokey-Daley Named Guest Designer
Steven Stokey-Daley will be the second guest designer at Pitti Uomo this season.
According to the men’s trade fair, the founder and creative director of namesake label S.S. Daley will stage a runway show in Florence at a date and location yet to be revealed.
“I’m honored to have the opportunity to take S.S. Daley’s manifesto of modern British storytelling to Pitti Uomo, the epicenter of menswear design,” Stokey-Daley said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Liverpool-native designer, age 26, founded his label in 2020 and is known for stealing the spotlight with his shows and clothing that reinterpret the British class system through a queer lens.
Following his BA at the University of Westminster, Stokey-Daley’s graduate menswear collection, which riffed on the peculiarities of 1900s British aristocratic dressing, caught the attention of eminent names in the fashion industry such as Sarah Mower and Harry Lambert – the latter dressing British musician Harry Styles in pieces from the graduate collection for the ‘Golden’ music video. This led to Stokey-Daley releasing his first menswear collection in partnership with Matchesfashion.com, which has since expanded to include womenswear and accessories.
Stokey-Daley had his London Fashion Week debut in September 2021, collaborating with members of the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain to produce an evocative fashion-performance piece exploring themes of race, sexuality, and class, which was heralded as a standout show of the season.
In 2021, Stokey-Daley was named as a recipient of the British Fashion Council’s NEWGEN initiative. A year later Stokey-Daley was awarded the LVMH Prize for Young Designers in June 2022. This was followed by receiving the Foundation Award at the British Fashion Awards in December of the same year.
“Steven Stokey-Daley transforms the British upper class into a queer fashion fantasy,” Francesca Tacconi, special events coordinator at Pitti Immagine, added. “Despite his youth, Steven’s project is characterized by an expressive maturity, an amused and eccentric reinterpretation of British Heritage, an indifference to gender stereotypes and a commitment to sustainability. We love his talent for revising the archetypes of menswear, the uniforms of the most exclusive British high society public schools, capturing the signs of the times and extravagantly subverting everything with a subtle irony, playfully amplifying the volumes of his garments, fooling around with the details, working with unexpected fabrics and floral prints.”
Luca Magliano Named Guest Designer
Luca Magliano has been named as Pitti Uomo’s next guest designer this season.
According to the men’s trade fair, the founder and creative director of namesake label Magliano will stage a special event in Florence during the show at a location yet to be revealed.
The event will mark Magliano’s return to Pitti Uomo. The brand made its debut at Pitti in 2018 with its first show, “Guardaroba per Uomo Innamorato,” a collection that was rooted in the notion that “luxury is nothing more than a gesture.”
Since then, the Bologna-based label regularly shows during Milan Fashion Week Men’s and is known for collections that imbue menswear fundamentals with a dark, off-beat and disheveled attitude to make it a natural genderless code. And, in 2023, Magliano was awarded with the LVMH Karl Lagerfeld prize.
In a statement on Tuesday, Magliano calls his upcoming Pitti event a “return home.”
“Pitti is where our project was revealed for the first time five years ago, with that enormous mountain of red roses which, thinking about it now, gives me a great sense of dizziness and tenderness: like looking ourselves in the mirror after some time and finding the important things again, even if everything has happened in the meantime,” Magliano said. “This return home, to people you love and respect, fills me with joy. It is the ideal opportunity to imagine ourselves in the future, more Magliano than ever.”
Lapo Cianchi, director of communications and events at Pitti Immagine, added that the trade fair asked Magliano for three reasons. “The first is that Luca has an outstanding ability to design the cultural and social canons usually associated with Italian fashion in an original way,” Cianchi said. “The second is that we believe it interesting, when possible, to take a periodic look – at the careers, and stylistic evolution of designers who made their public debuts at Pitti Uomo (Magliano was the winner of Who’s On Next 2017 and was the Pitti Italics in 2018) and then earned international renown. The third is that we like him – his generosity, his enthusiasm, and his educated simplicity – a true Emilian.”
