The snow-carpeted industrial venue, the atmospheric soundtrack featuring Ólafur Arnalds’ “For Now I Am Winter” and the contemplative pace of the models striding Shinya Kozuka’s fall runway evoked a placid, almost melancholic vibe.

The Japanese designer brought a whiff of his home country’s winters to Florence for his first European show as a guest designer of Pitti Uomo, referencing his night commute back home. 

But what were the lone gloves punctuating the collection intended to tell the audience?

Varied iterations of the winter accessory popped up here and there, hanging loose from the patch pocket of an apron, or accessorizing — in mitten-style versions accented with faux fur details — utilitarian ensembles with cropped, pocketed jackets and relaxed ankle-length pants.

In Kozuka’s nonlinear storytelling they referenced the lone gloves he often sees abandoned on the sidewalks in Tokyo — familiar and comforting objects that remind him of people’s journey back home, or, symbolically, a return to one’s roots.

In a preview with WWD, Kozuka said his ambition for the Florence show was to “highlight the fundamentals of the brand, the stronger components and avoid diluting them with too many elements. It’s about showing my characteristics and my character.”

The collection zeroed in on his familiar tropes, heavy on layering and novel interpretations of the workwear suit, with some refreshing detours toward full-on utility and others leaning more on craft.

The show opened with melton topcoats and suits with elongated blazers featuring traces of snowstorms in the speckled white paint appearing on the bottom halves; of footprints left on blankets of snow, printed on a flocked cotton duster coat over a simple tracksuit; of the slush covering city streets evoked by the jacquard pattern on chunky knits and printed on a fluid pant and top combo paired with a short overskirt.

References to utilitywear were scattered throughout — in a slightly elongated and multi-pocketed work jacket, a military-nodding bomber jacket and matching pants, and the numerous bib- or half-aprons layered over lean outfits including a simple shirt and culottes with voluminous pleats that gobbled up several yards of heavy cotton. Some of the aprons were splashed with a moody quote reading “youth is gone. Moon is there. Winter stands”; others were done in inventive knitted versions.

A coat bearing trompe l’oeil prints of buttons and mother-of-pearl appliqués on the bottom half closed the show on a craft-intensive note.

As a runway performance, it stood out for the moody and poetic undertone, but the collection somehow missed in providing the international audience some clarity on Kozuka’s core fashion vocabulary.