Photo Mike Hodis of the Runabout sportswear label with a customer at the Pitti Uomo men's wear trade fair in Florence, Italy. Credit Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times
FLORENCE, Italy — Next time you're debating whether to pack lightly or check a bag, give a thought to Mike Hodis.
Flying here from his home in Eagle Rock, Calif., on Monday for the 90th edition of Pitti Uomo, the huge men's wear trade fair, Mr. Hodis did as most travelers seem to do these days, pushing to the limit what can reasonably be crammed into an overhead compartment. He hauled two bags onto his Air Berlin flight and paid $210 to check another bag that contained nearly all of the samples from Runabout, his sportswear collection, that he planned to exhibit at the fair's Born in the U.S.A. pavilion.
Photo Polos and shirts from the Runabout collection. Credit Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times
Surely it is clear by now where this is leading. The checked bag vanished. At this writing, it remains missing. (It may be worth pointing out, as a cautionary aside, that Florence Airport — formerly called Amerigo Vespucci — is a notorious Bermuda Triangle for luggage.)
Despairing, Mr. Hodis questioned whether it made sense to pull out of the fair rather than put up racks (and risk humiliation) to hang the seven items he had to show to the fair's 30,000 expected visitors.
In the end, Mr. Hodis stuck it out and, as it happens, it's a good thing he did. Almost immediately after the fair opened on Tuesday, buyers from several major American retailers and from the influential Japanese retailer United Arrows stopped by his booth to talk about carrying his line, attracted by the striped polo shirts knit on vintage machines, the patterned cotton sports shirts made from reversed floral chintz and the spare installation.
Photo Brunello Cucinelli at Pitti Uomo. Credit Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times
The clothes themselves Mr. Hodis characterized as "very '60s central Cali." Presumably, he was referring to that part of the Golden State's midcoast that, by then, hard-core surfers had already begun to explore, trying to escape the "Gidget" types crowding Malibu's famous right-hand point breaks.
Minimal as the installation was — you could have driven a woodie between the shirts Mr. Hodis had on hangers — there was something immediately appealing about, say, a knit polo shirt with fat stripes in off-kilter hues like ecru, rust and turquoise, or a short-sleeved floral sports shirts "typical of something Reyn Spooner would have done," said Mr. Hodis, referring to the fabled American label founded in the mid-20th century by Reyn McCullough and Ruth Spooner.
Despite the archaic chin whiskers and idiotic neo-Edwardian foppishness that has characterized the crowds attending recent editions of the trade fair (which itself managed to successfully ride the recent w ave of a resurgent men's wear business after foundering so badly it almost became defunct), there is no escaping the dominant influence American sportswear has exerted on global fashion.
Photo At the Brunello Cucinelli stand. Credit Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times
Even one of the fair's major players, Brunello Cucinelli, is quick to credit American merchants for the success that vaulted him from a mere purveyor of cashmere sweaters to a billionaire whose quietly stylish blazers and sports clothes now stand as a sartorial emblem of arrival for the global 1 percent.
"Fifteen years ago, I was just knitwear," Mr. Cucinelli said on Tuesday. He was seated in a slipcovered club chair in one of the fair's central pavilions, in a roomlike installation chic enough to have passed for the cabin of the private jet he recently acquired.
"Barneys, Saks, the department store buyers urged me to expand," Mr. Cucinelli said of his label's offerings 15 years ago, based on the accurate intuition that traditional suits were headed the way of the dodo, soon to be supplanted by what is now the default uniform of the new businessman, a tailored blazer and jeans.
"I felt it was the right idea at the time," Mr. Cucinelli added, speaking through the translator who is always with him. "I did realize this could be the key to my success."
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