This new fashion year is starting off with a call for clearly constructed, almost architectural, and super sartorial menswear. For its 109th edition, Pitti Uomo is not just showcasing all currents of men’s fashion, the fair is making a clear statement on the return of classic tailoring and men’s dressing with a 2026 and beyond outlook. Obviously, that’s what Pitti is all about, with its numerous booths presenting countless versions of suits in innumerable variants.

Inviting Hed Mayner as the guest designer this season, known for his progressive approach to cutting a suit, reinforces Pitti’s direction: Streetwear had its peak, but it’s fading. Another fair focus seems to be bridging Italy and Asia by having Soshiotsuki be the other guest designer and Shinyakozuka present in a runway format as well. After all, it was Asian designers—Yamamoto and Kawakubo—who created the biggest commotions in rethinking classical tailoring way back when. We might now be standing on the brink of a new era of men’s wear.

Hed Mayner

The secret is out: After his Paris show back in June 2025, where he had been consistently showing for about five years, his relocation to Italy is largely owed to Pitti, and also to bring him closer to his Italian factories and manufacturers. Originally from Tel Aviv, Mayner has fairly rapidly made a name for himself for his stoic, yet always slightly romantic and frankly singular way of dressing the male body. Proportions always take center stage in his collections. In some seasons he puts more focus on the fabrics, in others he dives deeper into a concept, but what stands out are his oversized forms, slouchy shoulders, cinched waists, elongated torsos and cocooning silhouettes. All these fashion archetypes he’s made his own were reexamined for his first Italy outing: Mayner spoke about the collection as a way of regrounding yourself in the clothes: By changing around certain fixtures on a garment, away from their usual place, the wearer should more easily identify with the clothes. Making it truly their own. So sleeves started to curve in unnatural directions: away from the elbow instead of with it, necklines started to droop, striped tops got a stripe-matched pleating treatment, outerwear got turned around so the front became the back and collars were bluntly slashed off on a big portion of the shirting.

Choosing to present also women’s wear is broadening Mayner’s design horizon. And we’re happy he’s doing it. The Hed Mayner woman is apparently just as effortlessly chic, mysteriously stoic but playfully romantic as the Hed Mayner man. The blue halter neck dress in a plush crushed velour paired with heavy duty brown boots was nice, same goes for the silver sequins number worn with a very long and heavy knitted cream colored scarf. The houndstooth capes conveyed ageless sophistication, yet the NASA-esque silver space fabrics and baggy denim trousers pooling into worn, sagging socks tilted the mood back towards youthfulness. What must be said here though is that even now with premiering women’s wear, Hed Mayner’s clothes still haven’t really claimed one gender as their own as these outfits could come flying down the runway on a male or female model alike.

TANGTSUNGCHIEN

From Taiwan via Paris back to Taiwan, designer Tsung-Chien Tang took over a darkly dimmed UniCredit Theatre on the Pitti grounds for an hour or so to present what he’s been working on after returning to his home in Taiwan, leaving his knit-wear position at LOEWE and a spot in the finale of a past Hyères festival back in Europe. It was a welcomed change in the suiting scenery with his tactile, emotional and personal approach of dressmaking. While a big portion of the collection was rooted in tailoring construction processes, Tang proposed moving away from uniformity into a softer and more approachable structure. Long knit cardigans, jackets so stripped and softened to appear pyjama-like, and lots of light layers stacked on top of each other.

ECHOES OF CRAFT

Another highlight was the exhibit titled Echoes of Craft which brought together a mix of people and institutions: Designed by Azerbaijan born Galib Gassanoff (Ex Act N°1, now INSTITUTION), curated by Sara Sozzani Maino (Creative Director of Fondazione Sozzani) and initiated by Consinee Group, a Chinese company responsible for almost 30% of the world’s pure cashmere production. Of course certified everything: nice to the sheep and their shepherds, eco-friendly, water-recycling. They offered up their yarns to be sent over to an Italian manufacturer, generously used by Gassanoff to create lots of volume, elongated all-over fuzzy yarn looks but also used for some intricate weaving techniques. Cocooning is an understatement for some of these designs which were hung on the wall like art-pieces. It had a little Joseph Beuys vibe to it – just cashmere instead of felt.

SOSHIOTSUKI

Lastly, LVMH prize shortlister in 2016 and deserved winner in 2025, Soshi Otsuki presented his F/W 2026 men’s wear collection and by doing so caught the l’air du temps in a bottle: men’s tailoring is in peak evolution mode. The Japan-born designer, who graduated from the prestigious Bunka Fashion College put the concept of dressing up in suit and tie under a microscope and obsessively studied every detail there is resulting in 37 looks. Starting off by sending out a couple of jackets with the lapels seemingly ironed too broad and curling up at the tips to then flow into some protruding 3D button plackets on shirts alienating the use of a tie completely.  We really liked the thick corduroy used in the suits, cut on an angle to give a retro charm and the supple black leather jackets in different versions added an edge to the otherwise monotone grey and blue office palette. The onesies resembling a white button down worn with wide-legged office pants gave a whole new meaning to work-wear uniform, making us think of the famous photo series High Fashion by photographer Paweł Jaszczuk who biked around Tokyo at night taking pictures of drunk salesmen passed out on the streets after a long night at the office or dinner with clients. Some looks in Soshiotsuki’s line-up could easily appear in some of those photographs.