Ferrari and Luca di mention in WSJ article

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Italian Stallions
Michael Roberts travels to Florence to deliver the goods on the men's spring 2013 collections
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By MICHAEL ROBERTS


Michael Roberts/Maconochie Photography
Designer Manuel Vanni wearing his 1930s suit.

THE EVENING BEFORE I arrived in Florence, Madonna performed at the local football stadium for 40,000 fans during a heat wave. Looking around the sweltering city the next day it seemed to me as though the entire 40,000 had taken to the streets with cameras, cellphones and camcorders. They waved them at anything remotely connected with high culture, having had their fill of the low. The facsimile of Michelangelo's David, for example, which stands in the overcrowded piazza outside the Uffizi gallery, was wildly popular, attracting numerous Japanese coach trippers and American backpackers, jostling to target the sculptor's idealized nude in their viewfinders.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, an altogether different group jostled to see stick-thin male models wearing the latest fashions, as this was also the moment for Pitti Immagine, second in the round of menswear presentations after London and before Milan and Paris, which show what we might be expected to wear for spring 2013. The Florentine event is nowadays considered squarer, more commercial and the least glamorous of the four cities, particularly compared with the famous designers and starry names that normally overrun Milan. But it does have its points. On the flight from London to Florence, I ran into Jefferson Hack. "Oh, so you're here to see what men actually wear," said the former husband of supermodel Kate Moss and founder of trend magazine Dazed & Confused. Yes, I was.

“Manuel Vanni's bright suits demand a stiff drink or the wearing of strong sunglasses for full appreciation.”
Trends at the Florence exhibition, housing 1,067 labels in a sprawling series of pavilions, ranged from classic summer business suits in black seersucker to unconventional leather wingtips made from the reverse, rough side of the hide (both Japanese ideas). There were avant-garde summer raincoats made of paper-thin nylon and straw fedoras (both Italian). Swedish designer Erïk Bjerkesjö, who was awarded the prize for best new talent, showed a collection in monochrome synthetics including inside-out jackets bleached, dyed, waxed and washed in saltwater. They were inspired not by the artist Damien Hirst (and any treatment he had inflicted on some poor Scandinavian herring), but by the Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman. Around the corner, surrounded by a selection of his own suits in authentic multicolored 1930s linens and wools, another young designer, Manuel Vanni, waited for buyers. He wore a screamingly bright double-breasted suit of his own creation, fully lined in 100% floral silk with matching silk-lined yellow loafers. The whole effect demanded a stiff drink or the wearing of strong sunglasses for full appreciation. "The manager I stand in front of when I go to the bank may think I'm strange but I'm serious," he said.


Michael Roberts/Maconochie Photography
Prize-winning Swede Erïk Bjerkesjö with his inside-out jacket.

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Michael Roberts/Maconochie Photography
Valentino's military lineup

On arriving at the main entrance, visitors faced a tableau of scarecrows in a field of wheat wearing designer clothes, which, I was told, was a comment on sustainability. "It's a metaphor," explained Raffaello Napoleone, the dapper head of Pitti, who in his smart navy business suit and plain shirt was almost a metaphor himself for how fashionistas never "dress" these days. We shared a bench at the Valentino show with Bruce Pask, the fully bearded menswear editor for the New York Times. Mr. Pask, busily counteracting the heat by fanning himself with his invitation, didn't even bother to point out that his business suit trousers ended well above the knee, because so common a hot-weather look is this among the fashion cognoscenti. On my other side, Nick Sullivan, fashion director of Esquire, sat square and stubbly in a sweaty gray T-shirt and full-length chinos, flashing phone photos of his children which, I assumed, was the macho flip side to all this leggy, fashionista loveliness.


Michael Roberts/Maconochie Photography
Editor Bruce Pask talks fashion with Suzy Menkes.

The specially featured fashion show we attended was by the designer-duo Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri who now head up Valentino. Beforehand, the international hairdresser Guido Palau busied himself backstage with a blow drier and hair spray, having chopped the models' hair into approximations of an old-fashioned short-back-and-sides cut. "It's easy, rich, a little bit Gatsby," he said. "Don't make them too fluffy," warned the show's stylist.


Michael Roberts/Maconochie Photography
Ferrari's Luca di Montezemolo with car suiting

Funnily enough, I go back far enough to remember men's shows at Valentino, when the designer himself took charge and simply being fluffy wasn't nearly enough. He dressed the boys in items like mink hoods and huge Jackie Onassis shades. One year he even had their hair prepared in heated curlers to duplicate his own signature bouffant hairdo. No such campery stalked the catwalk today, however, as poker-faced youths marched out in sportswear with military overtones culminating in camouflage bomber jackets and trench coats, not printed but made up of many patchwork pieces—an exercise in technique as exquisitely pointless as most military exercises. And then, as if to demonstrate that campery had not entirely quit the stage, men's purses in camouflage appeared.


Michael Roberts/Maconochie Photography
Guido Palau sprays a model's hair at Valentino.

Accessories and toys for boys play a key part in the Pitti Immagine experience. Noted items included Swiss Army knives in sorbet colors, good-luck bracelets made from embroidered cotton and customized mountain bikes trimmed with tweed. The ultimate customization, however, drew me away from Florence down the road to Modena and Ferrari H.Q., where for anything above 50,000 euros you can have the interior of the latest Ferrari Berlinetta (around 270,000 euros), fitted in bespoke pinstripes, chalk-stripes, Prince of Wales checks, herringbone tweeds, corduroys, cashmeres, even blue denim. This service, called "Tailor Made," was outlined to me by Ferrari's ultra-tailored CEO, Luca di Montezemolo, flanked in his office by pictures of the company's Formula One successes and a photo of himself with the late, great industrialist Gianni Agnelli, generally considered the best-dressed man of all time. "Enthusiasm is at the bottom of all progress," read the inspirational card Mr. di Montezemolo pressed on me as we parted. Hmm, I thought. Swap the word "progress" for "trousers" and you have a handy motto for Italian menswear.

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