The mountains are having a moment, and it’s in this terrain that Umit Benan’s fall collection returned to archetypes of masculine elegance recast through a textured, subtly playful lens. As always, the designer started from an idea of classics—the urban man who divides his life between weekday tailoring and weekend alpine escapes—but let materiality and ease do the reshaping. “There’s always a starting image for me,” Benan said. “This time it was a photo of my father in St. Moritz in 1988, dressed in all colors. That’s the man I wanted to bring back, the one mixing cashmere with mountain flou.”
The novelty came from the textures, mainly: mélange cashmere, tweedy herringbones, silk-wool blends, and bouclé-effect wools or washed browns and Bordeaux checks. “I worked a lot on the thread this season,” Benan noted. “It was less about inventing shapes, and more about mixing tactility. Those checks that almost look dusty, those buttons in mother-of-pearl—they all remind me of something older, something that used to exist but doesn’t anymore.” Where the sharpness of suiting emerged, fabrics counteracted: what looked like banker uniforms from afar revealed themselves to be spun from more fluid, feminine fibers up close.
From city suits to après-ski knits, the silhouettes remained generous and timeless. The “Paradise” capsule, dedicated to luxurious mountain pieces, returned with added impact: slouchy knits in vivid hues, silk jackets in offbeat colorways, and pieces meant to feel like weekend gear thrown into a car trunk after the office closes. “My idea of the mountains isn’t necessarily technical,” the designer mentioned. “It’s personal and sporty, about a life that moves between two worlds.”
Benan’s man may change cities or climates, but he remains fundamentally the same, like an evergreen well-packed weekend bag. If this season proved anything, it’s that comfort and formality aren’t opposites, just different registers of the same vocabulary. Moreover, the presentation format in the brand’s intimate Milan headquarters remains the most valuable experience of its same world, where garments can be touched and read like a study in lived-in luxury.
