SS Daley is prepped for progress. On Thursday night, the British model took over Florence’s historic Palazzo Vecchio as one of many visitor designers at commerce present Pitti Uomo, marking a shift in technique to raised align with the menswear shopping for calendar. Shortly after the present, the model introduced funding from Harry Types, a frequent wearer of the label by way of his stylist and SS Daley collaborator Harry Lambert.
Types has taken a minority stake within the model, for an undisclosed quantity. “Harry and I’ve a shared imaginative and prescient for the way forward for SS Daley and we sit up for this new chapter collectively as we concentrate on model longevity and scaling the enterprise into a contemporary, British heritage home,” stated founder Steven Stokey-Daley in a press release.
The Pitti slot kinds a part of a technique to push the model ahead. SS Daley has been a mainstay of London Vogue Week since its launch in 2020, however Stokey-Daley took final season off to concentrate on growing its supply, together with the 35 appears to be like proven this week in Florence. “I didn’t wish to get too caught within the London rhythm of exhibiting each season,” he says. “We wished to attempt one thing new the place there’s a much bigger [men’s] purchaser turnout. We’re unsure what’s subsequent but, we’re simply seeing the way it goes.”
SS Daley AW24 menswear.
Photographs: Andrea Adriani/Gorunway.com
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Two latest accolades — in 2022, he scooped each the LVMH Prize and the British Vogue Council (BFC) Basis Award — have offered a wholesome pot of funding (a mixed £400,000) to scale the label, transfer to a brand new studio and develop classes like footwear, which he debuted in three kinds on the Pitti present, every riffing off a traditional British shoe: the idler, Mary Jane and brogue.
The Pitti Uomo visitor designer slot has been a launch pad or amplification second for among the business’s most outstanding names together with Raf Simons, Jonathan Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner, Erl and Martine Rose. This season, the occasion invited each Stokey-Daley and Italian menswear label Magliano to point out, presenting their extra fluid tackle menswear.
The morning of the Florence present, Stokey-Daley is relaxed, contemplating he’d solely arrived within the metropolis at 10pm the evening earlier than, after some last-minute casting in Milan. “There’s been so much to cope with when it comes to logistics,” he says. “It’s been difficult getting from place to position. That’s been a giant distinction [between Florence and London].”
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Stokey-Daley is understood for his storytelling method, and the Pitti present was no totally different. Entitled “Elliot’s Room”, it was impressed by letter exchanges between two Oxford college students who fell in love whereas sharing a dorm in 1935. The set was an abstracted dorm room, with crates stacked into pillars and full of pillows impressed by Dafydd Jones’s picture collection “The Final Hurrah”, whereas the gathering featured blanket coats, pillow coats, rope-trimmed tailoring and Stokey-Daley’s attribute eclectic knits. A notable look was a shirt with a big vertical fish motif, additionally showing on the present invite. “It’s impressed by EM Forster’s [early novel] Panic Room, a couple of British boy who visits Italy for the primary time and has a sexual awakening,” says Stokey-Daley.
The designer, who had by no means been to Florence earlier than he started location scouting for the present final summer time, was closely impressed by town, in addition to the literature round it. “Florence is like one big gallery to me, it’s so stunning, I really feel like there’s artwork in each nook. We truly modified the construction of the gathering after that journey; we let that inform the gathering.” He selected Palazzo Vecchio, town’s city corridor, as a result of it has a historical past of democracy that pertains to the designer’s examination of the British class system. In the meantime the sneakers, and a lot of the assortment, had been made solely in Italy this season (often they’re made throughout the UK, Italy and Portugal).
Earlier than the present, Stokey-Daley’s nerves and pleasure had been palpable. “It’s chaos backstage, let’s discuss right here,” he smiled, gesturing to the set, the place he’d simply watched rehearsals, quietly giving notes to manufacturing. Lighting checks continued as he filmed some movies for Vogue Enterprise, earlier than dashing backstage to make last touches as a crowd slowly gathered exterior.
Submit-show, throngs of editors and patrons jostled to congratulate Stokey-Daley, even earlier than the funding information broke. Because the designer appears to be like to scale his crew and increase his retail footprint, with a Pitti visitor slot, worldwide publicity and a few movie star buzz to propel his progress ambitions, he may very well be golden.
SS Daley AW24 menswear.
Photographs: Andrea Adriani/Gorunway.com
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Leo Meredith and Steven Stokey-Daley arriving at Vogue World: London 2023 on the Theatre Royal Drury Lane final September.
Picture: Acielle/Styledumonde
SS Daley AW23.
Picture: Acielle/Styledumonde
