Style Isn’t for Sale: Pitti Uomo 109
I spent three days at Pitti Uomo, and I’ve learned that two things; There is a difference between fashion and style, and I prefer to have my own style.
Outside of the Dandy characters I’d seen on YouTube, I didn’t know what to expect. I boarded the train in Rome and sleep the entire one hour and thirty minutes to Firenze. If I was a betting man, I would have never guessed that I would be given not one but two tickets for the largest men’s clothing and accessories fair in Europe in Firenze. It happens twice a year. I went in January of 2026.
I’ve been doing street photography for over 20 years now and thought I would try to pivot over into Men’s health and Fashion on my website, so I wrote exactly this message to the organizers of Pitti Uomo, and they agreed on my entrance with a plus one. I invited a designer I know named Cami. She makes most of her clothes from scratch.
Art manifested through personal clothing is not new. Large fashion houses were born out of this cultural mainstay that may have been a left-over relic of the rich and powerful in Europe. Only they could afford to wear certain things and certain fabrics, certain colors. Things have changed today obviously. And that’s the point of the trade fair, to show products that even the common individual could wear. Buyers are the main audience here. There were also some designers present. Few and far between that I saw.
I took an honest inventory of my own clothing. My wardrobe isn’t huge, but I like to think it’s well curated. That’s the point with fashion, I think, it’s about how you look. It’s about trends, the new thing. I spoke to a few of the Dandy Gentlemen lining the walls puffing their cigars. I asked if it was all a show of which 99.9 percent of them responded the same way; “I wear something like this every day”. Most thrift their clothing and mix and match what they find.
Then I had an epiphany on day two. Fashion is what I have previously described, that relic of culture that could have easily died with the old kings and queens and royal families in Europe and their monarchy’s but didn’t. It’s an expensive thing and impractical. It’s how we fatten the consumerism cow before we feed it to that multiheaded, dragon toothed monster called capitalism. Style on the other hand isn’t for sale though.
The designers and stylist had something unique that I wanted to hear more about. They were unique in their approach to how they looked and moved in what they were wearing. Just like the Dandy Gentlemen, whom most were also stylist, they have a lifestyle that they wear quiet literally. It doesn’t always show up on the runway, have a brand name, or is very expensive. Some pieces were even made from scratch. Some styles demand a tailored silhouette, others were more oversized, all were a perfect match to their personalities. These people are my tribe.
I went to dinner with Cami at a place called 25hours near the city center in Firenze. We sat and ate and talked for a few hours about the day. She told me one thing she was sure about after today, that was that she isn’t into fashion. She told me that she wanted to design for a special customer and for their lifestyle. I understood her more than what she thought I did, I’m sure.