There are still a couple of months before the next Pitti tradeshow, but there’s definitely an air of expectation in Florence since the special guests – Kate and Laura Mulleavy from Rodarte and Scott Sternberg from Band of Outsiders – were announced.
Deciding to explore the Californian creative scene came as a natural choice for the organisers: during the last few seasons Pitti Uomo (the men’s wear section of the event) and Pitti_W (women’s wear) invited young yet established designers who attracted the interest of the international press, showcasing their collections in unusual settings, from local factories to Renaissance villas.
“We’ve always tried to invite designers who were interested in building bridges between different fields such as art, culture, fashion, film and music,” states Agostino Poletto, Pitti Immagine Deputy General Manager and Marketing Manager. “Our special guests contributed to transform the Pitti from a tradeshow into a platform that allows people to look at fashion not as a self-referential entity, but as a multi-faceted prism that absorbs and reflects at the same time different impulses.”
Mixing in special events with the tradeshow at the Fortezza da Basso turned the Pitti into a unique event and a not-to-be missed appointment for buyers. “As organisers we abide to one rule, working on different levels and looking for innovative brands and designers – both up and coming and already established ones– from all over the world,” Poletto explains. “We have been putting particular emphasis on young people through special events and competitions such as ‘Who’s On Next?’ launched in collaboration with Vogue Italia. Yet our mission hasn’t been just turning in four days the trade fair spaces into an area where buyers and journalists can discover new brands, but also transforming the entire town into a lively place where fashion can tell its story.”
The June special guests, Rodarte for the Pitti_W n. 8 and Band of Outsiders for Pitti Uomo n. 80, will be invited to tell their own stories via two site-specific projects that will interact with iconic places in and around Florence, bringing in this way to Italy a bit of California.
Last year Rodarte were nominated for best costume design at the 16th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards for their designs in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan; a volume of photographs by Catherine Opie and Alec Soth that looks at the inspirations behind Rodarte’s world will be published in June, while their first west coast exhibition, entitled “Rodarte: States of Matter” and including designs from the duo’s 2008 and 2010 collections, recently opened at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art.
While inviting the design duo was a logical choice for the Pitti organisers, it was also a way to challenge the sisters to showcase their work in a different environment. “We usually take our special guests around to see some of the places where they may showcase their collections,” recounts Poletto, “but it has often been the case that, after seeing a selection of historical locations, industrial sites and urban spaces, the designers picked some of the most iconic places from the Renaissance. We’ve always respected the choice of the designers and actually found it very interesting because previous events in local villas and gardens allowed us to look at these sites with different eyes and also helped us creating a sort of chemical reaction between that space and the designs presented there.”
The trade show-cum-fashion event solution has so far proved as very successful: over 1,000 brands and more than 20,000 buyers turned up at the latest edition of the fair in January that also marked an increasing participation from countries such as Russia, Japan and South Korea. “The most interesting thing in our opinion was seeing a younger generation of buyers coming to visit us, also from online shops such as oki-ni. It was definitely very exciting seeing this new generation of buyers coming to Florence and discovering our exhibitors,” Poletto says.
The next edition of the tradeshow will see some important changes: one of its main spaces, “Futuro Maschile” will be turned into a sort of laboratory featuring international brands and designers that will try to combine classic men’s wear inspirations with modern ones, a theme that will also be tackled by a project launched by the Fondazione Pitti Discovery entitled “Vestirsi da uomo”.
In the meantime the e-Pitti, a digital version of the trade show, will open a couple of days after the Florentine fair, allowing all those buyers who won’t be able to go to Italy in June to discover the new collections from their desks.
Among the plans for the long-term future there is instead the possibility of inviting a country to showcase its art, design, fashion and food scenes. “We conceive the Pitti not as a clothes and accessory trade show, but as a global lifestyle project where a special alchemy is produced between the Fortezza da Basso, the city and the special events, this is the main reason why we would like to ask another country to come to Florence and introduce itself to our visitors in a unique way,” anticipates Poletto.
Yet, while there will be time to focus on future projects, there is something that can’t wait, the situation of those exhibitors, buyers and journalists coming from Japan, a country shaken by the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear emergency. “Japan always showed a great attention towards the Pitti and we always collaborated very well with its exhibitors, buyers and journalists,” Poletto states, “the country is very close to our hearts at the moment and we are currently in talks to see which practical actions could be taken to help Japan out of this sudden crisis. We genuinely hope its enthusiastic and talented exhibitors will be back to Florence soon.”
The next edition of Pitti Uomo + Pitti W is in Florence, Italy, from 14th to 17th June.
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