If the excitement about S.S. Daley’s arrival at Pitti Uomo wasn’t already palpable enough, a superstar endorsement of the Liverpudlian designer sure got people’s attention. Following the designer’s AW24 show – which was held yesterday inside the lavish Salone dei Cinquecento of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence – it was announced that Harry Styles was now a minority shareholder of the company. Over the last couple of years, Styles has been a routine wearer of the young British talent, whose romantic tailoring bagged him the LVMH Prize in 2022.
Backdropped by a series of Mannerist masterpieces, Daley set about juxtaposing British formality with an air of queer intimacy. Before designing the collection, he’d discovered a series of journal entities from an Oxford student in 1935 as he was falling in love with guy in another dorm. As such, many models came in a state of undress: tailcoats and shirts were worn trouser-less, burgundy sport shorts were paired with cosy duvet coats and hand-knitted tapestry ponchos were as if the collection’s protagonists had thrown a blanket around themselves after sneaking out of their lover’s room.
Elsewhere, Daley’s signature billowing trousers were swapped for more slender suits, as the designer revealed backstage he’d begun working with more factories in Italy to craft his collections. There was also military-inspired woollen coats, night shirts dressed up with paintings of fishes and boyish knits featuring cute, animal motifs – making for a well-rounded wardrobe that’ll delight the designer’s growing, loyal fanbase (Mr Styles included).
Photography courtesy of S.S.Daley.
