So the whispers went, it was the first time it had ever rained at the June edition of Pitti Uomo – the Florentine menswear fair which runs twice-yearly – a fact that threatened to derail Wednesday evening’s crescendo, a blockbuster runway show held by Italian retailer Luisaviaroma and British Vogue. Staged at the hilltop Piazzale Michelangelo against expansive views of the Tuscan city below, the glimmering spectacle came complete with a live performance from Andrea Bocelli and a panoply of supermodels, past and present, flown in from around the globe (Pat Cleveland, Mariacarla Boscono, Natalia Vodianova, Natasha Poly and Paloma Elsesser among them). As the sun set, the rain stopped and the show went on, watched on by a front row that included (to much fanfare) Hollywood heavyweight Leonardo DiCaprio.
If the show had little to say about the current state of menswear – there were just a handful of men’s looks in the show itself – it was a testament to the unique pulling power that Pitti Uomo, now in its 51st year, continues to wield. Proof of this came in this season’s highest-billed guest star, Roman fashion house Fendi, which chose to present its latest menswear collection as part of the programme. Transporting guests out of the city in a phalanx of people carriers and into the rolling Tuscan countryside, the collection – designed by the artistic director of menswear and accessories Silvia Venturini Fendi – was presented on the workshop floor of the house’s newly opened Fendi factory in Capannuccia, as artisans constructed the house’s leather goods as mise-en-scène.
