Two enormous ticking clocks hung at the entranceway of the Fortezza de Basso, the 16th-century fort in Florence which hosts the twice-yearly menswear fair Pitti Uomo. If ‘time’ was the official theme of this year’s edition – elsewhere in the fair digital clocks whirred with numbers, counting down and then back up again, as if glitching – a consideration of temporality seemed to also infuse the diverse selection of designers and brands on show, whether inside the Fortezza or in venues across the city.
Florence, of course, provides the perfect backdrop for an exploration of the passing of time. You can turn the corner, or pass through a doorway, and feel like you are moving through centuries; as a colleague noted on the first evening, having ascended a sweeping stone staircase into the ornate 17th-century Palazzo Corsini on the River Arno, it was almost overwhelming to think that people had been occupying these hallways for hundreds of years, and we were simply one of the thousands to walk alongside its gently worn stone floors (the occasion was a fittingly dramatic candlelit feast held by Italian designer Brunello Cucinelli, the unofficial opening of the fair).
