by Danilo Venturi

Nomadic on one side and minimal on the other. What was unified in the previous Pitti edition is divided again in the current one. It’s the game of innovation that plays with the convergence and the divergence, it’s the signal that the margins of menswear are going to be central in the nearest future, in terms of ethics and aesthetics in their relationship and consequently also in terms of business. Menswear is the new womenswear whereas the second is visibly exhausted and the first has instead huge potentials of creativity to be expressed. The historical give up of the bourgeois man who assumed the impersonal protestant outfit as a dress code for his profitable activities leaving to his surrounding women the role of representing the level of his success through the exposition of fashion and luxury products is coming up to an end. The new classic menswear is not worn formally, it’s nonchalant with the typical feminine elements of impertinence and provocation in the way it’s presented and adopted.

The transition to this new spirit of the time has been perfectly represented this morning by Olivier Saillard, director of the Parisian Musée Galliera, who showed some classic brands as Boglioli, Brunello Cucinelli, Camoshita United Arrows, Church’s English Shoes, Gianvito Rossi, Haver Sack, Montedoro, Nigel Cabourn, Piombo, Roda and Sartorio with a theatrical performance entitled “Dress Like a Man”. Violetta Sanchez, Amalia Vairelli, Axelle Doué and Claudia Huidobro, four models from our sartorial past, were shining in their real life beauty. With all-over black body stockings, they were dressed and undressed in front of the audience, without backstage. The men’s clothes were worn subverting their natural use, a pair of shoes like Napoleon’s hat, a shirt as skirt, crossing socks became a bustier, jump suit and trousers used for creating evening dresses. Inside put outside and back put in front. So, the innovation of the costume passed through the innovation in its use, showing how the adoption of a garment is not so natural but rather cultural, how aesthetics are influenced by the ethics in a given period, and finally in which direction both ethics and aesthetics are going. The four women were not dressed as men, they were not androgynous, and unisex neither. They were fully women, bringing more the men rather than the menswear on them. The message is: deconstruction, subversion and disjunction, all instruments used in the past in the womenswear by designers such as Gaultier and Margiela, who in fact have been cited more than once, are brought into the classic menswear. Now it’s time for creativity here too, no excuses, because women are frontally asking for men’s emancipation, in the real life and in fashion as well.

It’s not finished. Two the steady flows. First, the Pitti’s womenswear preview on the way back has shown that as men don’t need to fit in their business uniforms any longer, women can afford to get rid of the fatale and old style kind of seduction defined too many times and too generally as sensuality.  Second: as men are going to be less uniformed, they will not need to use their accessories like unique elements of ethical and aesthetical distinction. Example, the watch isn’t any longer the signal of how much precious is their time, so a status element, but a stylish toy, to be changed, disassembled and reassembled in different shapes, colors and details at one’s will, like the brand Wize & Ope is suggesting in its exposition. The same joy for headwear with the colored Super Duper handmade hats.

Last but not least, remembering once again Olivier Saillard’s performance. The context is relevant too. The chosen location has been Palazzina Presidenziale at Piazza Adua, beside Florence railway station with the tracks at sight, a tiny historical unspoiled place underlying the explosiveness of the small intuitions.

Small is big, classic is not formal, women are asking for men’s emancipation and menswear is the new womenswear. Isn’t it funny?