Kevin on craftsmanship, Pitti and peacocks
Hello friends. Forgive me not emailing last week. I’ve just returned from a hectic fortnight-long trip to Europe — including a visit to Pitti Uomo.
If you haven’t heard of it, Pitti is a mammoth biannual menswear fair in Florence that attracts many of the leading classic, craftsmanship-focused men’s style brands and producers… as well as a flock of preening peacocks desperate to be photographed for the style blogs.
[ Pictured: A still from Aaron Christian’s hilarious mockumentary, The Life of Pitti Peacocks. ]
The guys in ill-fitting turquoise suits with flamboyant facial hair, floral boutonnieres and feather-embellished fedoras, strutting around the piazza all day waiting for The Sartorialist to appear? I’m not really sure why they attend Pitti. I know why we do, though.
The peacocks are just a flashy distraction. Forget ’em. Pitti Uomo is really all about the serious menswear media, community and industry getting together in one place to meet, catch up with old friends, forge new relationships, plot collaborations, find suppliers and partners, and cooperate to push the culture forward. It’s also, vitally, somewhere to get a sense of the upcoming season’s trends (hint: terracotta colour’s gonna be big, fellas — get on it if you’re in possession of a darker complexion). And a place to drink too many Negronis.
We did all that and more.
I don’t want to give everything away right now (ah, drop by the atelier, have a whisky or two with me, and I’m sure I’ll let it all slip). Suffice to say, there’s some exciting stuff coming up at Kevin Seah over the next three to six months. I’ve told you we’re pushing into ready-to-wear, right? Wait ’til you learn what we’ve got in store… (Well, actually, it’s not in store yet, but reaching soon enough lah.)
We also went to Britain, where amongst other equally BIG things, we paid a visit to our friends Gaziano & Girling, both at their Savile Row store and their factory in Kettering, Northamptonshire. Craftspeople like G&G’s shoemakers — seen in the pictures above — are the real stars of this business. For that reason, it’s passionate artisans like the G&G team we’ll soon be celebrating and putting on a pedestal in the blog section of our website (which is currently undergoing expansion and reconstruction).
Other blogs can have the flashy dandies. Colourful peacocks might catch the eye, but it’s the truth and beauty of authentic craftsmanship that touches the soul.
Until next week,
Kevin
PS: Despite ducking and diving and being busy with business, we did get snapped a few times at Pitti. So if you see any pictures of Christian Barker and me on the street style blogs, let us know — email me the link at: kevin@kevinseah.com. I can’t bear to search through ’em myself. All the photos of turquoise-suited, feathery fedora-wearing peacocks make my eyes hurt.