Pitti Uomo Spotlights Versatile Men’s Wardrobes for Spring 2026

FLORENCE — The menswear pack is optimistic at heart.

Amid geopolitical instability and uncertain prospects of consumer behavior in harsher times, buyers and industry operators enjoyed the four-day fair with a forward-looking mindset.

The busy hallways, especially on the clear-sky Wednesday, the show’s second day, were “a great indication of the optimism and enthusiasm in the market,” said Bruce Pask, senior director, men’s fashion at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.

Business may not be expected to thrive in the short term but there is confidence for the future — at least for the time being.

“The large and vibrant crowd [was] a clear reflection of the industry’s collective hope for renewed momentum and recovery,” echoed Alessio Aramini, head of menswear at Florence-based e-commerce power player LuisaViaRoma. The retailer announced this week that it is partnering with the Camera Buyer Italia and its marketplace THEBS.com to create a multistore online destination to be launched later this year. Giglio.com, the Italy-based fashion marketplace, installed a booth at the fairgrounds this week for the first time.

As uncertainty roils, exhibitors bet on men wanting to play the safe wardrobe game, putting further emphasis on ease and comfort. The lack of a universal fashion message was offset by the versatility of the styling options offered that embraced different heritage menswear references — from soft and lightweight iterations of traditional suiting to refined workwear tropes and a good chunk of preppy inflections.

“The mood this season was one of precision and purpose, defined by a clear pivot toward intentional dressing with emphasis on fabrication, form and function,” said Mr Porter’s buying director Daniel Todd.

“We saw an emphasis on versatile menswear wardrobes, with an important focus on set dressing,” said Pask, whose favorites included Pitti Uomo stalwart Brunello Cucinelli which showcased a range of tailoring separates in soft but structured fabrications, slightly nodding to the ‘80s.

Making a point about the adaptability of the spring men’s wardrobe to cater to different tastes and needs, workwear trickled down to sartorial brands’ collections, too. No longer the uniform for the Americana geeks, it aligned with “the rise of modern utility, whether through technical or luxe fabrics in outerwear and work jackets. It’s being reimagined with an urban sophistication,” in the words of Enny No-Kim, a buyer at Bergdorf Goodman.

If the Knt x Sacs vessel taking center stage at the Kiton booth in the central courtyard of the fairground was any indication, resortwear was ubiquitous, down to the abundance of boat shoes and woven leather loafers and slip-ons, suggesting the industry’s yearning for escapism.

“Instead of dressing for the job you want it’s almost like next season is about dressing for the vacation you’d rather be taking,” said Nordstrom men’s fashion director Jian DeLeon.

Here, some of the top brands from the show.

Sebago

After announcing an apparel push last season with its return to Pitti Uomo in January, the BasicNet-owned Sebago, known for its loafer and boat shoes and turning 80 next year, sharpened its ready-to-wear offering, exploring more facets of its Anglo-Saxon-derived menswear, which combines New England references like Ivy League attire or fisherman chic and updated utility.

“We want to build a strong and coherent presence in the menswear segment, highlighting our authentic identity and making it instantly recognizable,” said global brand manager and creative director Marco Tamponi. The three main ethos were echoed in the spring lineup, a mash-up of “sportsman-wear” as Tamponi characterized the utilitarian pocketed vest over wide-legged chino pants; traditional preppy garb, including the Indian block-printed camp shirts, which he said have historically been part of that aesthetic, worn under saffron workwear suits in cotton gabardine, and the more traditional rugby shirts and chambray shirts layered on a white T-shirt and denim pants. Sebago’s target customer appears to be a thirtysomething guy with a fascination for Americana — which is also winning over the TikTok-loving Gen Z. Matching the looks, a lace-up canvas shoe style with a rubberized sole and the collegiate red-brick derby expanded the brand’s footwear universe, which “is growing exponentially in sales,” Tamponi said.

L.B.M. 1911

A sense of lightness permeated the L.B.M. 1911 collection. The brand, whose DNA is rooted in Italian tailoring traditions, is eschewing younger looks, offering a new take on classicism imbued with urban touches. Working a palette of cold neutrals, ranging from gray and brown to olive green with occasional hints of color such as mauve, dusty pink and dark cherry red, it reinvented the traditional suit in tonal combinations with matching overshirts and front-pleated pants in shirting-derived crisp linen. The line also offered summer wools — plied into a bomber jacket to be worm with tailored cargo pants — a water-repellent treatment, and zhuzhed up city business attire with broken suits, including one featuring a garment-dyed, double-breasted blazer in red worn over a tonal Egyptian cotton knit crewneck.

The workwear uniform, featuring a patch-pocketed jacket done in linen or cotton Solaro, commanded the same neat appeal of a more formal periwinkle suit with supersize lapels and a low-placed single button. The latter, part of the more fashion-driven Blackout line, was particularly captivating with its raw hems. Giovanni Bianchi, head of design for parent company Lubiam, said the company is proving resilient amid geopolitical turmoil and dented consumer confidence. Generating about 45 percent of revenues from international markets, including the U.S., its first foreign market, the brand is leveraging its Made in Italy credentials, which Bianchi said “are still more valuable than the 10 percent tariffs” currently expected.

Herno

Herno’s president and chief executive officer Claudio Marenzi has been making a point about “value for money” fashion for a long time. His commitment to high-quality, understated style conveyed via a total look, which has been expanded over the past few seasons to cover all categories, is both a fashion and business goal for the Italian entrepreneur. “It’s crucial for me to continue achieving that balance between quality and prices, so that customers may find us expensive but never overpriced,” Marenzi said. “We don’t want to inflate the market [by raising prices],” he said. Pursuing this objective, the company has implemented strategies that Marenzi said could help offset the impact of U.S. tariffs on the spending power of local customers, which has softened toward the end of the second quarter. “The wealthy pack is making a point about the ethics of luxury spending,” he said.

Building on its heritage and more recent vocabulary of essentials, Herno offered an approachable wardrobe with whiffs of preppy and a lot of urban-luxe outerwear, including technical trucker jackets, woolen overshirts paired with performance membranes, and rainproof peacoats, all done in a rarefied palette of soft neutrals, spanning from gray and white to charcoal and khaki. Crease-free blazers in matte technical fabrics and raincoats fell in the easily packable “Travel Edit,” one of the many drop-style chapters of the collection. Expanding its use of natural materials for the summer season, in alignment with its fall offering, the brand plied linen into workwear suits and herringbone checks in silk and cashmere blends into deconstructed blazers to be worn more casually over chino pants.

Eton

The storied Swedish shirtmaker Eton went on a summer trip to Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro, letting its more casual ethos do the talking with a range of young camp-collared shirts bearing banana leaf prints, organic swirls inspired by the work of Brazilian landscape architect and designer Roberto Burle Marx, and parrots on cotton mousseline with a silky touch. The colorful shirt range, which included emerald green oxford-striped shirts and casual madras button-downs, mingled with an expanded lineup of overshirts and blazers, as the brand — set to open its fifth flagship in Frankfurt in December, following the revamp and reopening of the London boutique last May — pushes toward adjacent categories. Travel field jackets with detachable sleeves, and wool, silk and linen or cotton seersucker blazers in subdued neutrals, conjured a sophisticated look, the latter worn as separates over contrasting black pants, with a shirt and tie or with cable-knit underpinnings, some featuring open-work detailing.

Paul & Shark

Over the past few years, Paul & Shark has been increasingly finding its sweet spot in combining performance and a sophisticated take on gorpcore aimed at grown-ups and youngsters alike. Fueled by textile research and development, the Italian brand — whose roots in a love of the sea are expanding to the outdoorsy lifestyle — stepped up the game, with Giza cotton knitwear, 100 percent silk blousons, and mixed-media outerwear iterations showcasing the brand’s fashion ethos. The hero Typhoon windbreaker was rendered in a linen jersey version for spring, paired with the Platinum version of the same-name membrane boasting water- and wind-proof features. The same technology was applied to bomber jackets and anoraks featuring knit panels, mingling with underpinning and relaxed pants at the intersection of formal and sportswear done in a resort-nodding palette of pastels spanning sky blue and peach pink.

Rag & Bone

Rag & Bone’s head of menswear Robert Geller went down memory lane. Capturing the rebellious and fashion-driven spirit of the British Mods and American Beat Generation, he distilled a wardrobe that straddled between nostalgia — evoked by the moody tones of washed sand, mud, charcoal and black — and currency. The denim offering led the conversation with more iterations of the signature “Infuse” jeanswear dyeing technique for a range of worn-in denim bottoms and the “Miramar” lineup of trompe l’oeil of printed jeans and performance fabrics. Both further cemented the brand’s authority in the category. With tonal jean shirt and pants, layered under a Prince of Wales blazer, or wool tailored trousers paired with a workwear jacket and denim shirt, Geller sought to defy conventions on the use of the latter fabric. “I really wanted to show how denim can be dressed up…with tailoring. That combination, to me, is super interesting. We’re destroying the range of what you can do with denim,” he said. Crochet knitwear, peach-touch T-shirts and leather and suede trucker jackets complemented the spring offering, mining a cool, uncomplicated wardrobe.