In My View by Eric Musgrave: A postcard from Pitti Uomo – TheIndustry.fashion

The pop song-turned-Labour Party anthem “Things Can Only Get Better” would have made an appropriate soundtrack to Pitti Uomo this season.

With a dire spring-summer 24 season following a decidedly lacklustre autumn-winter 23, even veterans of many menswear retail campaigns spotted at the Florence event had the air of fatigued troops from the trenches of the First World War.

It’s been very tough for a long time in the UK premium menswear market, a sector which most observers regard as being ruined by the domination of Flannels.

Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, owner of Flannels, is still looking to buy up strong indies. One owner visiting Florence confided that in its latest approach Frasers Group had said he could set his own price to relinquish his independence.

Not for the first time, he turned them down.

At the “better” level (one down from premium), the boom of the immediate post-lockdown period has been succeeded by a long, slow slog to get money in the till.

One usually upbeat owner, when I asked about trading, laconically responded: “It’s been alright when the sun shines.”

So we are talking about good days rather than good weeks since the beginning of the year.

Another trend in good menswear stores is for footfall to be down but spend by individual customers to be up.

The long-established IMC buying group, whose 100 or so member-stores would once have been labelled “better middle market”, have in many cases drifted upwards, pricewise, to start to get to the lower slopes of the “premium” echelon.

Male consumers who still appreciate quality and are more interested in a contemporary take on classic style rather than, say, gorpcore are being well served by such stores.

Good local indies still do well with tailoring but they are more likely to be selling a made-to-measure three-piece rather than a plain suit off the peg.

As ever, Pitti Uomo was a visual delight for anyone with an interest in high-grade tailoring, with bold pastels, washed out brights, linens and more double-breasted styles catching the eye.

Typically, what looks appealing under a bright Tuscan sun might not translate so well on a wet “summer” weekend in Tonbridge but all the buyers I spoke to – and there was an encouraging turnout – agreed Pitti Uomo continues to inspire despite it being noticeably smaller than 15 years ago.

Cautious, considered buying was the order of the day, however.

For the 49 UK exhibitors at the Fortezza da Basso, a general retailing malaise across Europe brought on by poor weather and sluggish economies has come on top of the farce of the post-Brexit trading conditions.

Luckily for some British suppliers, the US, the Middle East and Korea are doing well, but there is no sign of good news from the key market of Japan, where the yen has lost about a third of its value in the past two years.

And among all the enforced optimism that things might indeed get better – psychologically at least after the July 4 election in the UK – there was still the largely-unspoken reality that the menswear market is still massively over-supplied.

Now there’s a problem that is not going to disappear anytime soon.