Soft Tailoring, Workwear Define the Spring 2025 Season at Pitti Uomo
FLORENCE — Traditionally a barometer of menswear, Pitti Uomo’s summer edition, which closes here Friday, was perhaps a byproduct of current times, marked by geopolitical headwinds and a global slowdown of the luxury fashion market.
Men’s brands were not as eager to take risks and shift their mix, debuting instead reassuring collections hinged on soft tailoring, a new direction for utilitywear and shirts — camp-collared or otherwise — brought to the forefront as the new layering piece for spring 2025.
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“Many brands are seeking a safe shelter in the retro aesthetics and essential items that give a sense of security,” said Polina Voloshyna, head of buying special projects at Rinascente.
To be sure, the Florentine trade show speaks to a defined segment of the men’s style enthusiasts rather than avant-garde fashionistas, who lean toward the reinterpretation of classics.
“Pitti has always focused on the importance of getting ‘dressed up,’ and this season they stressed that importance that even more,” said Carolyn Wright, senior vice president, product at Holt Renfrew.
Yet there is room for a fresh take on traditional menswear tropes, contended Bruce Pask, senior editorial director at Neiman Marcus.
“Brunello Cucinelli, certainly the headliner at the fair, presented a perfectly refreshing collection with silhouettes that mildly referenced ’90s American cinema,” he said naming one of his personal highlights, along with knitwear specialist Luigi Fedeli e Figlio and Marco Pescarolo.
“A softened approach to tailoring stood out in what people were wearing to the fair and in many collections. Slubby textured linens and soft-shouldered sport coats are characteristic of the spring season, but the voluminous trouser is poised to hit critical mass,” said Jian DeLeon, men’s fashion director at Nordstrom.
As tailoring has become more unstructured than ever and oftentimes worn as a suit separate, in buyers’ opinion, workwear got a much-needed updated, too, with “more flexible styles, such as the hybrid chore jackets and functional, yet effortless styles that add a fresh perspective,” according to Reginald Christian, senior fashion manager, men’s at Saks.
The “Challengers” effect, in Pask’s words, and more broadly, fashion’s fixation for sportswear references — which Mytheresa’s menswear buying director Sophie Jordan billed as “the luxe sport crossover” — emerged loud and clear, with brands ranging from Brunello Cucinelli to Kiton’s KNT debuting tennis- or golf-inspired collections.
Overall buyers were pleased with the trade show’s mood, which they described as “vibrant,” “intentionally curated” and “optimistic,” despite the current landscape.
Here, some of the top brands from the show.
Caruso
Designer: Max Kibardin
Inspiration: A rich and sophisticated jewel-toned color palette and the ease of effortless sartorial elegance with playful and dainty whiffs defined the spring Caruso collection, rich in tonal separates — a ubiquitous trend at Pitti Uomo — and floral jacquard patterns that added an interesting spin to the tailored looks. Chief executive officer Marco Angeloni and the newly installed creative director Max Kibardin are consistently expanding the brand’s know-how in formalwear, adding a romantic spin, in sync with a more contemporary vision of masculinity. Its appeal, combined with the Lanvin Group brand’s positioning and price point, could resonate well with American consumers, a key target for the company, Angeloni said.
Key styles: A textured silk and wool double-breasted blazer in a sophisticated mauve shade layered over a tonal Mandarin-collared shirt and deep blue pants best telegraphed the playful Caruso approach to night tailoring, paired with deer leather loafers. When doing full suits, as in the slim Manon style or the hidden button, double-breasted model, the brand plied statement-making floral jacquard motifs signaling its knack for reinvention even within the boundaries of traditionalism.
Price range: The collection retails between $1,400 and $2,900.
Paul & Shark
Designer: In-house design team
Inspiration: Over the past few years, Paul & Shark has been revisiting its love of the sea and marine-nodding ethos to build a refined wardrobe based on key casual tropes that easily transition from the urban context to tony seaside destinations and outdoor life. For spring, a resort vibe showed in the color palette that was swathed in myriad nuances of blue and buttery white and the chic ease of knitwear and outerwear pieces that could be easily combined with one another. A strong effort was poured into fabric sourcing with high-end textiles including silk used for performance items, including zippered windbreakers, silk and superfine cashmere blends for knitwear, and Ginza cotton turned into denim trucker jackets.
Key styles: Among the outerwear standouts, the signature Typhoon windbreaker was offered in a silk overshirt version called “Shacket” that retained the wind- and waterproof features of previous iterations but added a new sophisticated spin. Elsewhere, relaxed pleated pants were matched with sailor collar, half-zip sweaters with white and blue stripes, or multistriped knit underpinnings. The Re-code line, part of the fall collection, hinged on archival pieces reissued with a modern sensibility.
Price range: N/A
Fay
Designer: In-house design team for Fay, curator Maurizio Donadi for Fay Archive
Inspiration: Fay returned to Pitti Uomo for the second consecutive season, expanding its presence to offer a glimpse into the two facets of its outdoorsy proposition. Having tapped a new curator, Maurizio Donadi — a vintage collector with previous experiences at Ralph Lauren, Levi’s and Giorgio Armani — its Fay Archive project hinged on spotlighting the company’s roots, offering vintage-y interpretations of the signature fireman jacket, while the Fay main line, designed by a creative team, expanded the urban appeal of the brand’s utilitarian outerwear. “Fay and Fay Archive are more and more engaging in a conversation,” said Michele Lupi, head of special projects at Tod’s Group. “Fay is very much rooted in the great outdoors and life in it. The Archive project spotlights the romantic and poetic side of that DNA.”
Key styles: In the Fay Archive collection, the signature fireman jacket, called “4 Ganci” for its distinctive hook fastenings, was done in distressed, washed cotton, sometimes patched up, for a lived-in effect or in technical nylon and colorful, horizontally striped cotton, evoking the “salty dogs,” the East Coast fishermen that originally wore the brand’s outerwear. The same outerwear design was revisited in the main Fay collection as a trenchcoat with an urban spin and tone-on-tone details including the corduroy lining of the collar. Expanding on its utilitarian roots, a new parka style crafted from Pluvia, a rainproof fabric, featured tartan lining, raglan sleeves and rubber snap buttons.
Price range: Prices for Fay and Fay Archive outerwear range from 600 euros and 1,200 euros.
Eton
Designer: Nicoletta Grazioli, design manager, and in-house design team
Inspiration: The storied Swedish shirtmaker Eton returned to Pitti Uomo after a five-year hiatus with an expanded assortment that builds on its know-how in the category but reflects the use of shirts as jackets, layering pieces over T-shirts, beach essentials for the camp-collared styles and overshirts as summery alternatives to blazers. CEO David Th?rewik defines the multipronged interpretation of the wardrobe staple as “smart casual. The shirt is part of all those types. It’s just slightly different variations of that shirt, maybe it has a softer hand or color. But I also think that even if you can see things changing in the market with [shifting] trends, high-quality products that last for a long time are something that won’t go out of trend,” he said restating the company’s commitment to quality.
Key styles: Souvenir prints nodding to summer getaways in Barcelona and the city’s architectural blueprint informed the more casual shirt offering, with sails and parrot motifs decking camp-collared shirts flanked by tonal striped linen buttondowns in popsicle nuances of mint green and peach pink. An elegant Saharan overshirt in linen and silk, supplied by Italian textile maker Reda, best exemplified the ongoing category diversification, as did the expanded knitwear assortment with Punto Milano overshirts and polo shirts.
Price range: Shirts retail between 150 euros and 495 euros while other apparel categories run from 120 euros for T-shirts to 695 euros for overshirts.
Herno
Designer: In-house design team
Inspiration: When Herno’s president and CEO Claudio Marenzi spearheaded a transition toward offering a total look a few seasons back, it seemed a risky bet to many. Now that luxury prices have soared past a “reasonable” point, as he put it, the brand’s understated take on menswear — which combines the quality ensured by the in-house manufacturing operations and a contemporary wardrobe-building aesthetics — is paying off. “We’ve done a cultural job on our collections bearing in mind a consumer that has a sense of modernity, but a measured one,” Marenzi said. The spring collection hinged on versatility and was filled with essentials that can easily be layered and matched. The hero outerwear category was flanked by enhanced and expanded knits and bottoms.
Key styles: The lightly padded overshirt proved a canvas for multiple interpretations, from the checkered quilting version with a glossy finish, to the textured seersucker and striped styles, the latter done in a technical fabric and nodding to shirting. Linen ensembles, featuring shorts and camp-collared shirts, catered to a younger consumer, as did the mixed media knits with nylon hoodies and the zippered anorak crafted from a Loro Piana fabric. The tenniscore craze was evident in the cable-knit vests and cardigans.
Price range: N/A
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