S.S.Daley’s Grand Tour came to Florence yesterday and his appreciation of the splendors around us in Palazzo Vecchio’s Salone del Cinquecento was reflected in his collection. Imagine your dorm room walls being adorned by Giorgio Vasari. As a guest designer at Pitti he had all of Florence available to him and he chose the room of the 500 with its pictorial decoration of glorious military exploits by the Florentine Republic. Each fresco is a tribute to what the city had achieved over the years and worked as juxtaposition for S.S.Daley’s naïve creative ethos. Daley’s inspiration is often based on the adventures that literature provides, far more than imagery. His mood boards are more likely than not a web of words that he then cards and combs into a collection. 

As the new term starts and the dorms are filled with tales of far flung wonders his collection was clearly anchored in a school called Arcadia who was also embracing the new horizons ahead. Pastoral scenes of carrot-hunting bunnies and sheep were the motifs of his idyllic and playful knitwear. Where the details of a traditional dressing gown became a pea coat and pajama-stripes strode out into the tailoring. S.S.Daley’s inclusion of sportswear reminiscent of the Eton Wall Game, morning coats and sleepwear were blended in admiration of the past ignoring nostalgia. One source of inspiration was E.M. Forster’s “The Story of a Panic” which is about a group of British tourists on holiday in Italy. Characters whose roots are firmly entrenched in the ethos of England but whose branches reach across time and place to new adventures. Forster’s book tells of an awakening in Ravello and S.S.Daley’s F/W 2024 collection rouses one from a playful sleep with his all-yellow raincoat and bucket hat. Daley shall sleep well knowing that his next chapter will include Harry Styles who has become a minority investor.