S|Style, now in its eighth edition, is the exhibition project by the Pitti Discovery Foundation, curated by fashion journalist Giorgia Cantarini and in exclusive partnership with the Kering Material Innovation Lab (Kering MIL). Launched in 2020, amid the pandemic to address a cultural, social, and market need for discussing, discovering, and showcasing a new way of conceptualizing collections and seasonality, S|Style serves as an important showcase for brands distinguished by their creativity and response to social and environmental change.
The participating brands at S|Style - Pitti Uomo 106: Buzigahill, Caoimhe Dowling, Denzil Patrick, Domenico Orefice, Florania, Guido Vera, Permu, Tolo, Unsung Weavers, Viapiave33
Buzigahill
Buzigahill is a Kampala-based clothing brand that works between art, fashion, and activism. For its first project series called Return to Sender, the label redesigns second-hand clothes and redistributes them to the Global North, where they were originally discarded before being shipped to Uganda. Buzigahill is named after a neighborhood in Kampala in which Bobby Kolade and a group of friends from the visual arts, music, and film scene lived during the inception stage. It is a special part of the city, with lake views, mature vegetation, and architectural memories of a bygone era.
Caoimhe Dowling
Caoimhe Dowling is a brand based in Copenhagen, Denmark, which takes an interdisciplinary approach to creating clothing and textiles. The work emerging from the brand celebrates storytelling through clothing inspired by her passion for writing and her childhood on the southwest coast of Ireland. The brand takes a holistic approach to sustainable practices and centers itself around craft heritage, emotional longevity, localism, and a deep-rooted connection to nature.
Denzil Patrick
Denzil Patrick celebrates the local beauty of London, through family histories that inspire the brand to create bold new expressions in the language of menswear. The design practice promotes a meaningful connection between the designer, studio, and wearer, creating clothes that communicate good craftsmanship, imagination, and beauty. The make stand-out pieces-wearable, individualistic products made with respect and dignity, telling great stories, beautiful sartorialism at its best.
Domenico Orefice
Domenico Orefice is a dual universe, consisting of two elements that are complementary and functional for each other: the tangible and the virtual, nullifying any distance between these two opposites. This duality does not imply division but rather an intrinsic harmony; it is expressed as a distinctive feature in every single element of the brand, creating an indestructible common thread between garments/accessories and the metaverse. A hybrid dimension where sportswear and innovation, tailoring, and craftsmanship intersect and contaminate each other without boundaries, a celebration of Made in Italy characterized by a contemporary and spaceless aesthetic code that like a nomadic traveller lands in infinite realities.
Florania
Founded by Flora Rabitti in 2021 with the aim of supporting Italian sartorial and textile traditions, designing clothes with minimal climate impact and positive influence, and inventing narratives that represent a genderless and 'idealist' niche. The brand believes that regenerative design, the ennoblement of existing materials, and the restoration of the identity of discarded clothes create opportunities for work, innovation, and growth in Made in Italy.
Guido Vera
Guido Vera is a cruelty-free, ready-to-wear brand based in Santiago de Chile. Inspired by the indigenous people and landscapes of Patagonia, Guido takes nomadism as an experience to get out of the comfort zone, thinking of the new nomad tailoring for the new era. A minimalist and genderless proposal with Chilean cotton, Vinylife, Cactus Leather (Desserto), organic pima cotton (Gots), high-tech, vegan, and biodegradable fabrics that help reduce our carbon footprint in the company of deadstock textiles from the era of the dictatorship in Chile to work through the circular economy. "Resignify Chilean materials to move into the future.", says Guido Vera.
Permu
Permu is a contemporary menswear brand. They are dedicated to finding the connection between garments, the body, and nature. The word Permu comes from the abbreviation "Permutation". According to the designer garment and body have a close interaction and exchanges. The relationship between the body and the clothes wrapped around it can express different emotions and states, it is another language for Permu.
Tolo
Tolo born in 2019, initially focused on custom and then moved on to a 360° design of each garment. The name Tolo is nothing more than the abbreviation of the designer's surname. The logo is clean and balanced, best expressing the aesthetics in just four letters. The artistic background of the designer in the world of painting and drawing influences his stylistic choices which revolve around the search for "beauty". The brand is characterized by a harmonious aesthetic, contaminated by different worlds such as workwear, military tactics, or the traditional costume of my country, recounting and reliving the "beautiful nostalgia".
Unsung Weavers
Traditional village production was dependent on lifecycles, requiring both rainwater and dry periods, in tune with the seasons and natural symbiosis. Through ritualistic processes, the wool’s innate properties became animated by earthly divinities, by water and light, before being reanimated by the designer’s hand. Unsung Weavers re-frames historic material metamorphosis, acting like a cape around the timeless collaboration between nature’s human and non-human agents. Unsung Weavers is a series of one-off garments hand-crafted out of woollen blankets salvaged from Mediterranean villages. Each unique piece is a relic in itself, echoing the long-forgotten rituals of rural production while reviving the ancient craft of weaving.
Viapiave33
Viapiave33 is a brand for the future, operating in the present. The brand curates and offers a collection of commodities, thinking of a new lifestyle for the human being. Founded in Milan with an international vision, our products include garments, accessories, body care, and home décor.
S|Style, Pitti Discovery Foundation
Pitti Uomo 106
June 11 – 14, 2024
Fortezza da Basso
Firenze - Italy
Photo Cover: Florania
© Modem