Pitti Uomo: The Looks at Undercover and The Soloist

Over the past few years Pitti Uomo has played host to some amazing designers such as JW Anderson, Raf Simons and Gosha Rubchinskiy, whose shows were standout moments of men’s fashion week. This season it fell to two Japanese designers to deliver such a moment: Jun Takahashi of Undercover and Takahiro Miyashita of The Soloist. They didn’t disappoint.

Staging their shows together in a disused railway station, the duo took the audience on a space odyssey – quite literally. Takahashi began the proceedings, serving us his trademark “high fashion combined with street fashion” (his words), infused with Japanese punk and references to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Clothes printed with stills from the film and paired with rings and cross-body bags fitted with a red light resembling HAL 9000. As the show finished, the audience were plunged into darkness and four astronauts took to the runway, modelling ‘Undercover-ised’ space suits in yellow, red, black and white.

Then came Miyashita’s turn. He delivered an all-noir collection that was similarly space-age, but in a much more menacing way. Models’ faces were obscured by masks and hoods, while their clothes were fixed to their bodies with straps. And yet the designer’s description of the show revealed something much more poetic about the collection. “This is a collection that releases new melodies, authenticity and reimagines the classics,” he said after the show. “Its energy comes from the discovery of the new poetry born out of chaos. It is my journey about finding my innermost self and expressing it the best way I can. I hope you feel it.”

Finally, as the audience were plunged into darkness once more, the catwalk lit up to reveal a seemingly endless stream of models – nude but for white floor-length pleated skirts and armbands – emerging from one side of the building, and another stream of models – wearing black cropped halter neck tops and synthetic jeans – emerging from the other. It was quite a spectacle.

While there was a shared theme of order and disorder, the two designers apparently worked in isolation, seeing each other’s collections for the first time just two days prior to the show. Despite this, there was a beautiful cohesion between the two collections. Together, they took us on a space odyssey and showed us a compelling kind of menswear – and it was with a slight sense of sadness that we returned to Earth.