This week, we take a look at Pitti Uomo naming Korean designer Post Archive Faction as this year’s guest designer, an inspired choice emblematic of the event’s aims to diversify and look to the future.
Every year at Pitti Uomo, the menswear event and trade show held in Florence, a guest designer is chosen. In recent years, brands like MM6, Luca Magliano and Todd Snyder have held the role, and in previous decades, designers like Dries van Noten and Dolce & Gabbana have greatly benefited from the increased attention getting selected brings.
While all the brands in attendance have a chance to show off their clothing to editors, buyers and customers, the guest designer gets the honor of presenting a unique or special show during the short three-day festivities. For example, up-and-coming designer Giorgio Armani presented one of his very first collections at Pitti Uomo in 1979. Established designer Yohji Yamamoto staged a retrospective of his 30-year career at Pitti Uomo in 2005.
This year, Pitti Uomo’s “guest designer” is Post Archive Faction, a South Korean brand founded by designers Dongjoon Lim and Sookyo Jeong. Supported by Pitti Immagine, the organization that hosts Pitti Uomo, and the Korea Creative Content Agency, PAF will host a show in the middle of Pitti Uomo when the event kicks off on June 17.
Lapo Cianchi, Pitti Immagine’s director of communication and events, said PAF was chosen based on the Pitti team’s growing admiration for the artistic culture of South Korea.
“Over the last season, we have been devoting special attention to South Korean culture,” Cianchi told Glossy in New York on Wednesday. “Of course, we are making business decisions, but we also personally love Korean films, Korean contemporary art, Korean photographers. They are pushing beyond the boundaries of their art forms, and that is true for fashion, as well.”
Cianchi said the Pitti Immagine team is trying to look beyond the traditional bounds of fashion, to “throw open the window and see what’s outside.” He cited PAF’s use of asymmetric cuts, its influence from sportswear and its experimental takes on traditional menswear as unconventional yet appealing attributes.
PAF creative director Dongjoon Lim defines the brand’s ethos as being “an archive of the future.” It’s the same forward-looking and experimental ethos that has made Pitti Uomo an increasingly international event. The last edition of the event, in January, had 20,000 attendees. Compared to the previous year’s event, attendees from outside of Italy grew by 6.5%. There was double-digit growth in the number of buyers from Spain, Japan, Belgium and the United States. Pitti Uomo’s emphasis on an increasingly global vision of fashion is a stark contrast to the American isolationist trade policies that have thrown the industry into chaos in the last month.
Pitti Uomo has increasingly looked to newer and younger designers to ensure the event and its buyers are staying up to date with fashion’s latest directions. Cianchi pointed to Grace Wales Bonner and Martine Rose, guest designers in 2022 and 2023, respectively, as examples of the kind of fresh fashion voices the event values.
“[Younger designers] are linked with their friends and peers in music, art, set design and graphic design,” Cianchi said. “They combine it all. Grace Wales Bonner can bring the cultural and the social and the almost anthropological together with a contemporary eye.”
But Asia continues to be a particular source of inspiration for Pitti Immagine’s curators. Featured as guest of honor this year is the Japanese menswear label Homme Plissé Issey Miyake, which will host an event at Pitti Uomo on June 18.
“We have long hoped to associate the name of the great Japanese brand with our event,” said Raffaelo Napoleone, CEO of Pitti Immagine, regarding Homme Plissé Issey Miyake. “I can’t help but be struck by the blend of elegance, functionality, innovative use of color and materials, artistic flair and conceptual lightness that define Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s work.”
While Cianchi said that, by far, the biggest challenge facing menswear right now is tariffs, as it is for the rest of the industry, there’s another obstacle that menswear is still dealing with.
“There are many wonderful menswear brands,” Cianchi said. “But there are still a lot of men who are not informed on the fashion industry. The supply is good, but the problem is on the demand side. There is still a lot of education to be done on menswear.”
Stat of the week
In April, shipments coming to the U.S. from Vietnam grew 32%, from Italy grew 30% and from Thailand grew 13%, according to data from supply chain company Descartes. The data reflects the ongoing production diversification away from a sole reliance on China in the wake of the global trade war.
Executive moves
- Long-time Nike executive Heidi O’Neill is stepping down from her role as Nike’s brand president. In her place, Amy Montagne is stepping into the role. It’s one of many leadership changes that have shaken up Nike in the last year under new CEO Elliott Hill.
- Tory Burch made three big new leadership changes in its international business, appointing Thibault Villet as president and international director of APAC, Japan and EUME; Paolo Zullo as president of Europe and the Middle East; and Joshua Chen as president of China.
- Céline Assimon, formerly CEO of the diamond giant De Beers, is starting a new role at Bonhams, the international auction house.
Other news to know
There was a bevy of fashion earnings reports this week. Here are a few highlights:
- QVC reported a net loss of $91 million for the latest quarter, compared to an $8 million profit in the same period last year, blaming tariffs for the poor results.
- Pandora saw its sales rise 7%, but president and CEO Alexander Lacik said the company will almost certainly have to raise prices soon if tariff relief isn’t forthcoming. He said the same will hold true for the rest of the jewelry sector, as well.
- Sales at Hugo Boss fell 2%, with CEO Daniel Grieder calling the consumer climate “rather gloomy.”
- ThredUp saw its first-quarter revenues rise 10%, validating CEO James Reinhart’s prediction to Glossy in February that the tariff chaos impacting the rest of the industry may be a benefit to resale.
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