Marine Serre shows chic, glamorous men’s collection at Pitti Uomo

Marine Serre has landed a big hit with her first show outside Paris, featuring her first comprehensive menswear collection. As guest of honour of the Pitti Uomo show, the French designer staged a surprising event in Fiesole, in the Florentine countryside, within the magical setting of a historic mansion, Villa di Maiano, and its Italianate garden. James Ivory’s movie A Room with a View was filmed at Villa di Maiano, but when Serre, who hails from the Corrèze region of France, first discovered the venue, she thought about Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, a film she adores and which inspired her in designing this couture-style collection.
 

To a live New Age soundtrack, the models crossed a first terrace at the base of the 15th century mansion, with a view on rows of olive trees and the surrounding wooded hills, before stepping into the second terrace’s Renaissance garden, where they trod over ancient Persian rugs set around a central fountain, amidst beds of roses, small hedges and lemon trees. The setting sun’s fading rays caressed the city of Florence with its Brunelleschi dome in the distance, the ideal setting for a highly Instagrammable show.
 
Marine Serre’s men’s looks, whether featuring double-breasted suits or the more understated ensembles with single-button jackets, oozed natural elegance and plenty of personality. Especially the red silk shirts with 70s-style maxi collars and cuffs with golden buttons.

Even more striking were the Mafioso and cowboy-style outfits, featuring total looks in shiny leather in purple or scarlet, with tone-on-tone shirts, ties, jackets and trousers, decorated with the label’s highly recognisable half-moon logo, including of course briefcases and bags in the same hues and materials. Not to mention a look consisting of loose grey flannel shorts, under which peeked boxer shorts in the same thin stripes as the shirt.
 

“I love layering shirts, ties and suits with a little upcycled touch. My last runway show in March was rather ready-to-wear, so this time I wanted to do something extremely elegant. I wanted to show what I could do with a couture style. For me, tailoring is the most important aspect in menswear. I like the idea of bringing sartorial looks to the street,” Serre told FashionNetwork.com. With this collection, she wanted to pay tribute to Italian tailoring expertise, as a large part of the looks have been produced by Italian ateliers, the rest coming from France and Portugal.

“It was a great pleasure for me to design this collection, having seen the venue first. I loved styling these men’s looks, and I couldn’t help doing the same for women’s looks too,” she said with a smile. Indeed, it was a woman who opened Marine Serre’s Spring/Summer 2025 show, wearing a moire crinoline dress and an impressive jewellery-like top made out of crystal necklaces. In total, the label showed 49 looks, nearly half of them women’s. Serre took the opportunity to announce that she would not be showing in September.
 
This wasn’t Marine Serre’s first foray into menswear. The designer launched into this segment with a capsule collection in 2019, and after that she regularly included men’s looks in her shows. “Menswear accounts for more or less 25% of sales. It’s more like a potential I feel the label has, given also the feedback I’ve had from my male customers,” said Serre. In the last 12 months, she has been developing, among other things, men’s footwear, like the moccasins and boots that were presented at the show. In addition, Serre has redesigned Repetto’s high-heeled Justine sandal, a collaboration that will be launched with the new summer collection.
 

Marine Serre’s men’s and women’s silhouettes were all about cut and shape, their perfect lines “creating an attitude” together with statement jewellery that sparkled in the sunshine, while their fabrics fell sensually on the body. As usual, the label presented a series of upcycled patchwork models made from recycled fabric, such as the tasselled check coat assembled from an array of tartan scarves, the jigsaw shirts and shorts made out of various silk scarves, and the tennis bags transformed into a couture corset dress!
 
The eight all-white looks that closed the show riffed on the upcycling theme, and were made using sheets, pillowcases and tablecloths. In one of them, small lace doilies were stitched on to a skin-coloured bodysuit to coyly cover the breasts, and in another they were matched with a pair of granny’s knickers to compose an extremely sexy wedding gown. Elsewhere, a pair of trousers was cut out of a lace curtain. “I wanted to send a message of hope, peace and love,” concluded Serre, who titled her collection Sempre Legati (Italian for ‘always bound together’).