On Tuesday, at the first day of Pitti Uomo's digital edition, Raffaello Napoleone, CEO of organizer Pitti Immagine, still had a bit of hope that the physical edition of Pitti Uomo and its related events could take place in Florence February 21-23.
But with today's decree of Italy’s prime minister Guiseppe Conte, valid from January 16, that various containment measures in the country will extend the suspension of physical trade shows until March 5, Pitti Immagine has announced that February’s physical editions of Pitti Uomo, Pitti Bimbo and Pitti Filati are canceled and will exclusively take place in digital mode on its Pitti Connect platform.
“During the last weeks the possibility to hold our shows in a physical format were obviously decreased,” said Napoleone. “Though we had kept the option open until the official confirmation, as we felt the strong desire of our exhibitors and buyers, despite all the doubts to meet physically in a direct way. Ours was not a superficial optimism, nor an obstinacy despite evidences: We were rather determined not to file any remote possibility hoping it might have been a useful message for next months.
We felt like a coach encouraging its team until the last minute of the game. We will play our next physical ‘game’ next summer, though, in the meantime, we want to continue scoring points. For this we have worked hard on our digital editions and want to continue focusing all of our energies on it (on Pitti Uomo we are now counting on about 250 companies) and we are sure it will continue to be strategic for the future, too. All our live streaming events of past days and the big success they met, are already a good start together with all the collections already visible through Pitti Connect.”
The digital contents of the present trade season will remain online until the beginning of April and shall guarantee the exhibitors and buyers to reciprocally interact said an official statement by Pitti Immagine.
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