Pitti Uomo 109 staged a double bill of designer runway shows on Wednesday: Hed Mayner with some very fine conceptual and exploratory tailoring, and Shinya Kozuka, with a glove-inspired avant-garde display.
 

Hed Mayner: Tel Aviv tailoring

Mayner, an Israeli-born designer who for the past couple of years has divided his time between Tel Aviv and Bergamo, presented an impressive collection of enveloping clothes and twisted silhouettes that broke plenty of fresh sartorial ground.

Hed cuts clothes away from the torso and body, so they hang with a certain unexpected authority. Take his nipped-at-the-waist matinee idol coats that are finished with oversize sleeves worthy of a highwayman. Or consider his marvelous jackets, with sleeves that curve away, and shoulders that taper ahead. And you could not help admiring the cloak-meets-houndstooth topcoat combinations; or the superb flowing trench coat that Hed paired with silver sequin sweatpants and shirt.
 
“I wanted to create a sort of parallel universe, where the clothes work alongside the body, rather than over it,” explained Mayner, in a pre-show briefing.

With his high forehead and vertically ascending mop of hair, it would be easy to mistake Hed Mayner for a physicist. His clothes do reek of experimentation. Though he is certainly no mad scientist – as his experiments generally work, and often with great drama.

Hed showed 10 female looks and 25 looks for guys in this show, and the gals had a brainy, yet tough air about them too. Like the very snazzy pinstripe skirt suit or the brilliantly curvaceous worn. Leather biker jacket, whose shoulders ended halfway down the biceps. All told, this was a master class in bravura tailoring, that still managed to have plenty of commercial credibility.
 
Ever since his debut show in Paris in 2017, Mayner has been a consistently interesting designer, of considerable talent. And even if the odd look in this show was frankly absurd, like his pleated suede cone-shaped dresses, that only added to the sense of occasion.
 
All staged inside the Palazzina Reale di Santa Maria della Novella – a distinguished example of 1930s Rationalist architecture, finished with trompe l’oeil frescoes made to look like tapestries recounting Roman and Florentine history.
 
Making for a memorable fashion statement, by an Israeli designer who fully exploited the opportunity and honor of showing in Pitti, the world’s best organized fashion salon and trade fair, bar none.
 

Shinya Kozuka: Weird in a warehouse

The opening of Wednesday’s two shows in Pitti was by Shinya Kozuka, marking the Japanese designer’s international catwalk debut.

 
The invitation was a white cotton glove, and the inspiration was Japanese photographer Koji Ishii’s well-documented habit of taking photos of lost gloves found on the street.
 
But if the well-spring of the collection was intriguing, the clothes often felt contrived and convoluted.
 
In his defense, Kozuka is clearly a clever print maker. His assemblages of wild deer, moose, wild crows and campaniles seen in scarves or soft cotton shirts looked great. But a series of ragged, baggy denim shorts; lump snow-pint tops and bulky coats failed to impress. 
 

A collection presented inside the Magazzino, meaning warehouse, of the Fortezza da Basso – the giant medieval fortress that is the nerve center of Pitti – the show-space space was decorated in a fake snowscape. 
 
Kozuka didn’t take any bow at the finale. And the applause was the weakest we have ever heard in over 100 runways shows in Pitti.