Dress to Impress or Style Stagnation at Pitti Uomo.

Florence has long had the title of world’s menswear capital. The reason for that is biannual Pitti Immagine Uomo, the event, which is as important as Milan Male Fashion week, though the format is completely different. At Pitti, the fashion crowd does not sit along the runway but instead freely moves from one pavilion to another, while watching the latest styles and trends of the upcoming season.

Pitti Immagine Uomo is not simply a concentration of the world's best-dressed men, it is the meeting point of established professionals of menswear fashion business world, who really influence the development of the industry on a global scale – designers, buyers, distributors, investors, and as a result photographers, journalists, and fashion critics. And yes, men’s style at Pitti is more than impressive.

But according to some fashion insiders, with whom I had a chance to talk during the exhibition, like Scott Schuman, the famous photographer and founder of “The Sartorialist”, menswear fashion, though rising extremely fast on international market and even outpacing growth in womenswear by almost double, has recently stopped to develop and is now loosing its appeal. Indeed, we are rather tired of exactly the same silhouette Italian men show us.

So does the Italian men’s style is in the stage of stagnation? While watching the crowd it was pretty obvious that though men were stylish head-to-toe, they all looked more or less the same. The typical Pitti Style Men can be described rather easily, which is upsetting: “Cropped trousers, loafers, the surfeit of pocket squares and tailoring”.

Where and when did Italian man loose imagination? Or this is the individuality? But individuality cannot be the same for everybody, right… Japanese men at Pitti were more impressive in terms of innovativeness, independency and uniqueness of style than Italians, which is sad, as the host country is supposed to impress and set the standards. For many decades Italians are known as the best-dressed men in the world, but for me the situation is changing.

Style needs to develop otherwise it is becoming boring. There needs to be something to “re-ignite” the unique Italian style. Let's wait until next Pitti Uomo and see what happens.

Kseniya.