Exhibitors Spotlight: Baracuta

Exhibitors Spotlight:
Baracuta

Editorial

Edition 100

15.07.2021

Classic British brand Baracuta’s latest collection puts an upcycled spin its menswear classics

Exhibitors Spotlight focuses on a selection of brands exhibiting at this year's Pitti Uomo, showcasing their upcoming collections and special upcoming projects.

2021 has undoubtedly been the year of rebooting, adapting and customizing tradition, all whilst celebrating its timeless, immutable quality. This season, we’ve noticed a variety of brands revamp their heritage feel, flipping it on its head to espouse the customer, production and environmental needs of the zeitgeist.

Started in Manchester in 1937, Baracuta is one such emblematic brand of Made in England clothing carefully reassessing its legacy this season and adjusting its design philosophy accordingly. Perhaps best known for its G9, G4 and G10 jackets, which have reached an iconic status in the realm of menswear and have persisted for decades, the classic British label’s appeal has over time disseminated to be adopted by a variety of youth movements and subcultures including the punks, the mods, skinheads, and English rockers.

This season, Baracuta’s SS22 collection sprung out of a desire to explore the brand’s dense archives, and renew their most iconic pieces. This seasonal focus is a rediscovery of a the brand’s most notably established and collectively loved garments, such as the G4 Jacket. A twin of the legendary Baracuta G9 Harrington Jacket, the G4 shares the same conceptual origin with its sibling. Both pieces were first designed in Manchester in 1937, and feature the same trademark details: the standing collar, the shape of the buttoned pockets, and the umbrella back vent — most importantly, the ever-present Fraser Tartan lining, subsequently adopted and repurposed by a wide variety of styles and vogues. Both models are declined in an array of new colors inspired by the brand's favorite metropolises: London, Berlin, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Milan.

Receptive to the urgency of societal, cultural and environmental concerns brought about by a previously wasteful and ecologically damaging fashion industry, Baracuta’s SS22 collection also inaugurates the internal Baracuta Pro sub-label, working exclusively with upcycled materials.

"My personal definition of upcycling is very similar to the philosophy that Baracuta has been basing its work on for the past three years," says W.P. Lavori in Corso manager Luigi Bucci. "It consists of renewing something old and boring in a fresh, useful, beautiful, creative, and forward-thinking piece".