At Pitti Uomo, SOSHIOTSUKI Holds a Mirror to Italian Tailoring

There are some shows that feel like they’re more than presentations of clothes. You can sense it in the air as people mill about — the excitement, the anticipation — and then at the close of the show, in the applause and in people making a beeline to get backstage.

On Thursday in Florence, SOSHIOTSUKI put on one such show, which raised questions not only about what’s in store for the recent LVMH Prize winner, but also for Pitti Uomo (the trade show at which Otsuki was the guest designer), and Italian fashion writ large.

Guest designers have always hailed from both Italy and abroad, but the first time that I came to Pitti Uomo, in 2014, the menswear fair was still primarily serving as a window on Italian craftsmanship and tailoring. That has changed in the intervening decade, with global brands now representing almost half of the exhibitors at the fair and some of the stalwarts of high-end Italian menswear absent from the Fortezza da Basso. One of this year’s marquee events at the fair was Sebiro Sanpo, the Japanese Style Suit Walk, which aims to portray suits not just as clothing for special, formal occasions, but for daily life. It served also as a tacit acknowledgement that the culture of tailoring (and of Pitti itself) has changed, from one which revolved around Italian tradition to something global, with particularly strong ties to Japan.

Outside the confines of the Fortezza, the landscape of Italian menswear has also changed. In 2021, the Forbici d’Oro was awarded to the Romanian born Vladut Mihail Motau, marking the first time that the honour of the best tailor in Italy was bestowed to a non-Italian-born craftsman. Motau was soon joined by An Seungjin, a Korean-born tailor working in Florence, who won the prize in 2023. The Italian tailoring industry now not only draws on, but relies on talent and know-how from across the globe.

And that is where Otsuki’s flowing tailoring comes into play. With his eponymous label, the Japanese designer has continued a long tradition of reflecting Japan’s relationship with foreign clothes back to the world outside Japan. SOSHIOTSUKI’s clothing is informed by what he grew up with: the Giorgio Armani-style tailoring worn by Japanese salary men in the ‘90s and ‘00s, with soft, yet well-defined silhouettes, that exuded an innate, comfortable luxuriousness. Armani himself had been a guest designer at Pitti Uomo in 1979, using the platform to help launch the unstructured tailoring that changed the way men would dress.

At the first Pitti since Armani’s passing, it felt fitting for Otsuki to present a collection rife with tailoring informed by the Italian’s philosophy. The tips of lapels came pre-curled, imitating those one might find on a vintage Armani suit found in a Tokyo second-hand store; fabrics were light, with a tissue paper-like quality in how they crinkled and folded with movement; trousers were wide and pleated not once, not twice, not even three times, but in an almost ruched manner; grey, the colour favoured by salarymen was omnipresent, albeit in a new yarn-dyed shade rooted in a proprietary blend of black and beige; the soft tailoring was contrasted by highly-structured, stiff knits; sumptuous suedes and richly-textured corduroy fabrics brought tangible luxury, while a trompe l’oeil jumpsuit resembled a crisp white shirt tucked into grey trousers, but was actually sewn together — workwear for those behind keyboards. Amidst the barrage of references to Italian tailoring there was also traditional Japanese sashiko stitching and boro construction employed on trousers and tailoring.

A decade ago, the word on everybody’s lips at Pitti Uomo was sprezzatura, which is essentially the Italian art of simultaneously looking great and put-together and also like you just got out of bed; it’s care-free, effortless style born from people who actually live in their clothes. Jacket sleeves are rolled, ties are askew, clothes might be rumpled or wrinkled. In the last few years, that’s felt harder to find at Pitti, but it was at the core of Otsuki’s collection, a reminder of what made Italian tailoring so famous and influential.

With Italian tailoring in crisis as masters of the craft struggle to find young people willing to learn the craft and take over the business, it’s fitting that SOSHIOTSUKI is serving up the best riff on what made Italian menswear a global powerhouse. What was once exported from Italy to Japan as groundbreaking ideas and impeccable Italian craftsmanship is now being imported — billed as an exciting new look from Japan.

If the future of Italian tailoring is clouded with questions and doubt, SOSHIOTSUKI’s seemed quite clear after the show: a fêted designer, destined for success by making the clothes everybody wants, but nobody else wants to make.

The post At Pitti Uomo, SOSHIOTSUKI Holds a Mirror to Italian Tailoring appeared first on Sharp Magazine.