FLORENCE and MILAN – The 2 Italian labels that book-ended Pitti Uomo final week — luxurious big Brunello Cucinelli and Satoshi Kuwata’s Setchu — have one thing to say about what’s presently working in a tumultuous menswear market.
On Tuesday, Cucinelli feted the opening of Pitti Uomo in Florence by internet hosting lots of of visitors in a lavish Baroque palazzo on the River Arno. Chandeliers large enough to crush a person (or a number of) spun above a multi-course dinner ready by the cooks of triple-Michelin-starred restaurant Da Vittorio. A throng of youngsters huddled exterior within the chilly, screaming for an opportunity to see Korean actor Ji-Chang Wook, a model ambassadors flown in for the occasion.
In brief, Cucinelli partied prefer it was 2022 — when the posh trade’s gross sales have been surging to unprecedented heights within the wake of Covid-19. The model can afford to: its considered one of only a handful of listed luxurious firms to have generated regular development because the broader trade entered a downturn in 2024. Final Monday, the corporate reported fourth-quarter gross sales up 12 % year-over-year, and full-year revenues approaching €1.3 billion ($1.34 billion).
“Consistency, high quality, exclusivity,” are the pillars of Cucinelli’s continued success, chief government Riccardo Stefanelli stated a couple of days later on the label’s spring-summer 2025 menswear presentation in Milan. The corporate began within the Nineteen Seventies making restricted runs of nice cashmere sweaters; it’s grown right into a cross-category purveyor of Italian life-style with over 150 retail shops promoting what it calls “absolute luxuries”: €8,500 overcoats, €5,500 cashmere blazers. “We don’t consider there’s any drop within the need for luxurious — certainly we consider there’s a niche available in the market for actual luxurious ready-to-wear,” Stefanelli stated.
Pitti Uomo closed Thursday with the primary runway present by Setchu, the LVMH Prize-winning, Milan-based label by Japanese designer Satoshi Kuwata. The present — that includes pleated tailoring, customisable deconstructed knits, shirt clothes and paper denim ensembles incorporating upcycled sugar cane waste — was well-attended and well-received, marking a significant milestone for the fledgling model.
A tiny trend start-up like Setchu (an Italian trainer offers group classes to the studio) and luxurious big Cucinelli, a purveyor of timeless type with over 300 unique suppliers clustered round its headquarters in Umbria, may appear to have little in frequent. But each are indicative of what’s presently working in a troubled luxurious market that, in keeping with consultancy Bain, has misplaced over 50 million clients over the previous two years.
Prime-Finish Propositions
The trade is quickly upscaling as manufacturers hike costs to deal with inflation and buoy their prime strains because the post-pandemic growth fades — and that requires manufacturers to develop unique services and products to assist domesticate ties with the wealthiest clients, who can abdomen larger costs and are extra insulated from macro-economic shocks.
Each Cucinelli and Setchu say their costs replicate the standard stage of their suppliers: Italian cloth mills whose hefty investments in R&D set their merchandise aside. At a time when small designers have been broadly criticised for making their garments prohibitively costly for his or her area of interest audiences, Setchu has pushed the top-end of his assortment even larger: some items have been designed in collaboration with Savile Row go well with store Davies and Son, whose tailors will fly nearly anyplace on the earth to do the fittings for its $10,000 fits (permitted you order a couple of).
Uneven Market
After all, most manufacturers and retailers — even luxurious names — can’t credibly reposition themselves on the very prime of the market, having already grown world companies constructed on a far broader spectrum of shoppers. Sluggish demand from entry-priced and “core” luxurious clients has led to steep gross sales declines at tent-pole manufacturers for the Italian trend trade, notably Gucci, whose gross sales fell 21 % within the first 9 months of 2024. Capri Holdings is reportedly searching for a purchaser for Versace after gross sales fell and it turned loss-making final yr.
Italian menswear has been comparatively resilient, however nonetheless slowed dramatically in 2024: exports have been broadly flat final yr, rising lower than one % in comparison with 7 % development in 2023, and a 25 % soar the yr earlier than that.
To get clients enthusiastic about trend once more, many luxurious manufacturers are searching for to shake issues up — retooling their artistic groups and industrial methods — as a consensus emerged final yr that a lot of them had turn into overpriced, overdistributed and overly homogeneous of their designs.
On the Milan menswear exhibits (which kicked off on Friday), not so many manufacturers appeared prepared to point out off retooled visions: new designer Haider Ackermann’s debut for Tom Ford will look ahead to womenswear; Gucci and Fendi additionally each selected to carry off on males’s exhibits this season in favour of co-ed outings in February.
Outside Manufacturers
Retailers who can’t wait for large luxurious to type itself out are searching for development elsewhere.
Technical manufacturers centered on snowboarding, mountain climbing and different out of doors pursuits continued to realize traction at Pitti Uomo, with operating particularly getting a devoted house on the honest. New operating manufacturers have proliferated in recent times as the game quickly grows and turns into an more and more social exercise by way of run golf equipment and on-line communities like Strava.
“We’re seeing a powerful constructive dynamic for technical attire — with extra manufacturers constructing well-being and efficiency components into their provide,” stated Raffaello Napoleone, CEO of organiser Pitti Think about Srl.
“This class will proceed to growth as the posh buyer continues to need ‘one of the best of’ provide throughout each ingredient of their life-style,” Mytheresa purchaser Sophie Jordan echoed.
Patrons from La Samaritaine division retailer in Paris shouted out Fulfill as a stand-out fusing operating and trend, in addition to Portal, a brand new model co-founded by the artistic director of mountain climbing label ROA. Bosse Myhr, shopping for director at Selfridges, favored the provide from mountain climbing model Danner.
Twisted Classics
Past the technical house, the menswear provide this season was usually marked by “very secure,” easy-to-wear collections, La Samaritaine purchaser Clarisse De Chauton stated. However they got here with extra particulars to sign creativity, character and preciousness in comparison with the extra essentialist wardrobe dressing of earlier seasons.
Curated classics with refined twists are actually the bread-and-butter of Our Legacy, which confirmed its fall-winter assortment in Milan Saturday and remained one of many most-worn manufacturers for menswear insiders this season. The Stockholm-based model, which introduced an funding from LVMH’s Luxurious Ventures arm in November, confirmed a bigger-than-usual co-ed assortment with tuxedo-inspired jackets in washed-out grays and discreetly tie-dyed cardigans, “emphasis[ing] the stress between the sharpness of being ”on responsibility” and the secure anonymity of on a regular basis life, the model stated.
Prada, which confirmed Sunday, leaned into embellishment to subvert and elevate the on a regular basis: automobile coats have been adorned with jagged, asymmetrical fur collars, teddy jackets and blazers have been embellished with flower broaches. The road’s signature wonky graphic prints sneaked in the place you wouldn’t count on them, with nostalgic 60s floral prints on cowboy boots and hoods. Traditional blazers have been interspersed with shrunken jewel-toned trousers.
Prada has been one other outlier for Italian luxurious, persevering with to develop as rival manufacturers contracted final yr. A re-merchandised provide below co-creative director Raf Simons, with a better proportion of easy-to-wear wardrobe items punctuated by logos and extra directional gadgets, has actually helped the model to date. Whether or not Prada Group can preserve placing the precise steadiness between trend novelty and merch might be a key query in what’s anticipated to be one other rocky yr.
