Are you in Florence? Have you  joined an Italian language courseat Italian me school?, it is a mid-June morning, and took you longer than usual to arrive?

You’re late, you get off the bus and start walking towards Via de’ Tornabuoni. You isolate yourself from the world by taking the cell phone … and proceed headlong trying to be careful not to run into a tourist. These tourists all dressed alike, with their white shirt brought out of khaki shorts and Birkenstock sandals, preferably with light socks, baseball hat and an incredibile mix of colors.

You proceed by Via della Vigna Nuova and your eye takes a look to someone wearing a red socks, while your other eye follows the blue striped yellow socks. You look up … and realize that the situation has changed, something new is going on in the city, a positive change.

You realize that the terrible traffic this morning is for the week of Pitti Immagine Uomo! Florence becomes for a few days of men’s fashion capital and for a while it stops being just the wonderful Renaissance city and becomes the forerunner of what man will wear next season, looking to the future!

It is a pleasure for the eyes to be surrounded by models, elegant clothes, but in the most eccentric ways, tailored pinstripes with accessories in vivid colors, clean, generous in estravagante. The Florentine often captures only the inconvenience that this fashion week involves, congested traffic more than usual, detours, road closures, squares entirely closed to prepare for the event X, sprouting tables set for dinner in the most unlikely places in the city but … ..

but the reality is: if you want to look beautiful, you must suffer a little.