Emporio Armani (Q3033)
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Italy-based international luxury fashion house
- Giorgio Armani S.P.A.
- Armani
- Giorgio Armani
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Emporio Armani |
Italy-based international luxury fashion house |
|
Statements
“What I love most about New York is its speed, its constant reinvention, and its ability to remain both itself and entirely different,” Giorgio Armani toldVoguebefore his show tonight. He might as well have been describing himself. The 90 year-old showed 90 looks that gave us a dizzyingly broad overview of the many territories Armani has explored during his 49 years in business, yet which also felt fresh: this was more than some reverent retrospective.The ostensible reason Armani was in New York for his first-ever mainline show outside of Milan— and his first show here since 2013’s One Night Only—was to herald the reopening of his store (and restaurant, and apartments) on Madison Avenue. At the pre-show schmooze the news was that this store has been taking north of $1 million a day in its first three days so far. But beyond that reason, this show was long overdue: between 1975 and 1982 Armani’s ascent from obscure start-up to become the world’shottestfashion designers was inextricably linked to the passion he inspired here. Second only to Milan, New York was the key launchpad for his global success. As he said of his earliest visits: “Experiencing it for the first time in the late 1970s after only having seen it on the screen was stimulating. It was an exciting time for both the city and America, and I felt like I was part of it.”Mid-schmooze, it was the arrival of two steam trains projected onto the walls of the Park Avenue Armory that signaled this evening’s show was ready to go. A curtain dropped to reveal a huge showspace set with semi-circle banquette seating. We gradually settled into Armani’s fantasy waiting room to watch a show that unfolded a little like the Grand Central Station scene inNorth by Northwest.The first passenger to stride past wore a cropped trench and full pleated pants tucked into mid-calf boots. She was shadowed by a luggage-lugging porter but also carried a greige leather pochette clipped to her belt and a clutch tucked under her arm. After her appeared several other characters who were precisely delineated by props or styling: these included the flustered hero in greige tailoring whose knitted tie had blown over his unstructured right shoulder, and the uptown princess in blush silk bloomers and jacket dress, also in blush, that nicely complemented the handsome labradoodle-meets-cockapoo dog she held in the crook of one arm.
18 October 2024
The defocused silhouettes of bamboo palms shifting lightly in the breeze were screened around the walls of Giorgio Armani’s marble-effect runway this morning. Exotic birdsong fluted through the cavernous main theater space in the designer’s beautifully maintained Tadao Ando fashion cathedral. Leaning back in our padded beige director’s chairs, the experience felt as close as a Monday morning work appointment will ever get to a vacay afternoon spent dozing in some Arcadian subtropical beachside cabana.The clothes were just as serenely soothing to contemplate, a 92-look saunter through variations of the Armani silhouette in slowly shifting tonal stages that progressed through gray, beige, taupe, cream, carbon, bronze, and navy, to a final inky twilight blue. Highlights included tie-accessorized cotton double-breasted suiting in silvery gray whose precise slouch and softness reconciled Monday morning context and ease-imbued energy. Neck scarves added jauntiness to silky-sheened collarless work jackets arranged over full pleated pants and covered-lace suede derby shoes. A suede blouson/bomber in taupe/bamboo with floating button closures worn over a rib knit sweater tucked into some suspender-suspended five-pleat pants dreamily recalled some of Armani’s very earliest 1970s menswear collections.A series of monochrome negative prints of palm trees and leaves was printed on loose T-shirts, shirts and pants. Next came a quartet of frond-printed technical silk looks in matte metallic tones whose full pants tucked into sometimes squeaky-soled boots transmitted a leisured yet utilitarian demeanor. Later we saw more palm leaves in knit jacquard and a colored-in outline print. The sun slowly set on this last Giorgio Armani menswear show of his ninth decade with a brace of perfectly proportioned collarless wrapped evening jackets and pants in a blue so dark it almost seemed as black as the woven leather tassel-topped loafers below them. Mr. Armani took his bow flanked by Leo Dell’Orco (who had also shared the bow at Emporio) and Gianluca Dell’Orco, who is head of the Giorgio Armani men’s style office.
17 June 2024
“I am me. The others are the others,” said Giorgio Armani with a shrug after his first show of two this morning. “When I create my collections, I think about women I meet everywhere, and not out of intellectual or sexual stimulation. Instead, I think of their faces. We can accept everything today, but that’s not me: I’m over seeing a joker walking around Via Monte Napoleone in her underpants. That’s when I hate the termfashionand would like to see it abolished.”If this makes Milan’s maestro of maturity sound inherently conservative, you haven’t been paying attention: Mr. Armani’s success remains rooted in the radical disruption with which he reshaped fashion nearly 50 years ago. This closing collection of Milan Fashion “Week”—Armani told journalists that he’s asked, in writing, Milan’s Camera della Moda to look to extend the week, and moves are being made—epitomized his industry-shaping taste. Another radical move much appreciated today was that he started his show only 15 minutes after its advertised time (he turned the lights up and down again from backstage to emphasize he was ready to go) and presented again in his central, comfortable, and unpretentious Via Borgonuovo space.Gina di Bernardo, who starred in many of Aldo Fallai’s defining 1980s campaigns for the designer, opened the show in a technically paneled shades-of-gray overcoat and pleated silvery separates between a fedora and flats that were embellished with the winter flower illustrations after which this collection was named. Loose velvet combats and soft tailored herringbones were among the panoply of pants worn above gently embellished and oversized outerwear (Look 12’s navy field jacket was an ideal example). Silk satin jodhpurs in black or navy were worn above loosely belted jackets: Some of these were accented with collar and fastening details based on Asian dress, an enduring Armani theme.Eveningwear included purely silhouetted gowns in black decorated with dragonfly embellishments. These, Armani conceded, might make suitable choices for those in need of a red carpet dress. Before posing for a group photo with the doughty corps of Italian fashion correspondents who have followed him for so long (and who are so often foolishly disregarded by designers who land in this city), Armani had toldThe Guardian: “I don’t think I will ever stop working, because dressing people is my life’s great passion.”
25 February 2024
When I was a youngster, the apocryphal tale used to go that during his shows Mr. Armani would observe his audience from backstage, his eyes alive to any seat-slumpers, phone-scrollers, or—God help them—ostentatious yawners. Today one of the evergreen designer’s piercing blue eyes really was fixed, unblinking, on the audience from the first look to the 81st. This show began with a film of Mr. Armani going to the front door of his house (which we were in) and peering through a spyhole. That eye gleamed on a projection from the back of the runway as we saw a collection that was entitled The Look.Mr. Armani IRL came out immediately afterwards to be photographed with the cast and answer questions. He instantly spotted that someone had left an invitation on his polished basement runway floor. It didn’t stay dropped for long. When quizzed about the show we’d just seen, he showed that his vision has a wider, more expansive aperture, too. “I don’t have an especially precise message,” he said. “It’s variations on a theme. I don’t think men’s fashion needs to be changed every season… I believe it must not be an upheaval; the secret is to do the usual, in an unusual way.”So what was unusual today? It’s hard to answer exactly. The excellent Neve ski wear and snowboard section that bisected the more day and and more evening looks in the run was perhaps longer than expected. Maybe Armani was gearing up for the Milan Cortina Olympic games which will be starting just 24 months from now. This show’s opening ceremony focused on variations of Armani’s original eureka suit, long of skirt and wide of leg, in what looked like shaved terry or herringbone or jacquard birdseye or black velvet; some of the shapes in the fabrics were like a macro Gio Ponti interior. The defining contours of the jackets shifted from Western tradition to Eastern, depending on the cut of the collar and height of the closure. The proportions were gorgeous. The occasional pop of color in knitwear kept your attention. For all this suiting, there was an unusual absence of shirts. No ties here.Post Neve, Mr. Armani delivered curveballs. The lynx-print velvet three-piece suit—still no shirt, but a cravat—was more riotously ornamental than you expect. Its follow-up blouson in Look 66 would not have looked out of place on an Hedi Slimane runway, had it not been so realistically cut. Revere-less suits and a suite of eight evening wear looks followed, before Mr. Armani himself.
As you walk into this showspace there is also a tangible whiff of ionized air from what must be Mr. Armani’s pool and sauna close by. Today that was especially apt for a show that hit you as both refreshing and deeply relaxing: this was the usual, unusually—and Armani's second excellent outing of the week.
15 January 2024
The sun shone in Milan again for the concluding big show of the week, at Giorgo Armani. The designer held three performances of this collection (it’s usually two) in order to accommodate all the editors and clients who are in the city. Outside via Borgonuovo was crowded with people hoping to spot famous guests arriving, and around the corner a queue snaked down three sides of the Armani Hotel.Armani called this collection Vibes, and showed it against a projected backdrop of cloudily diffuse waves of color. All of his models had late ’20s style (and Madonna’s ’90s revival) finger wave hairstyles, and sported looks often decorated by waves, shown in five or so phases, each punctuated by a subtle shift in lighting. The first section concentrated on an interplay between bronze metallic fabrics and silk grayish blue. As across the whole of the collection, looks were often cinched by belts in two or three strips of leather, cut to curve against or alongside each other.Phase two shifted to Armani´s baseline blue, and starred a strapless dress gridded with woven rectangles of blue against a darker knit sheath. This was accessorized with two wave bangles worn mid-forearm and a tiny crossbody bag, as well as the flat-soled boxing boots that shod every look in this collection. As Armani pointed out to editors afterwards, he has long presented evening wear, whether with pants or skirted looks, atop flat shoes: he has no intention of wavering now.The blue shifted to accommodate a conversation with marine green in a wave-buttoned kimono jacket. A trouser and vest-top in silk (blue again) was frothed with a foamy skirt of sheer wave-shaped panels that ran across the waist and broke at the left hip down towards the floor. The mood became darker via near-black looks that achieved their waviness sometimes simply through the reflection of Armani ́s spotlights against their fluid silky fabrics. Color broke via a waistcoat embroidered with gleaming shapes—maybe shells, maybe planets—in purples and blues. We entered a section that seemed adjacent to Emporio’s closing looks earlier in the week, its layered full skirts and sheathed pants insinuated with subtly glinting crystals and worn beneath hand-tooled harnesses and bustiers. One model wore no fewer than ten bangles on her right arm.The final phase brought a wave of dusky pale pink to the foreground, with color accents drawn from the section before.
Collarless jackets and long tulip skirts were colored and beaded with art deco reminiscent banks of rolling cloud shaped color. At the close Armani’s last model came out in a long and loosely fitted cloud dress with a crystal-inset sporty neckline, from which was draped a floor-length sheer shawl inset with more points of reflection. With Isadora Duncan verve she swooshed and twirled as she made her way down to the photographers, with a sketch of her look projected up onto the wall behind her. Mr. Armani came out to applause and waved: it was a vibe.
24 September 2023
A blank page and a pencil: such has been the starting point of every Giorgio Armani collection since 1975. Today Mr. Armani brought that moment of beginning to this collection’s moment of publication at his downstairs showspace on Via Borgonuovo, via the pointed inclusion of an extremely large pencil at the end of his runway.Armani drafted his menswear masterpiece decades ago, but the cycle of fashion means that it is constantly subject to revisions, elisions, alterations, and edits; every season sees a new layer placed over the one before. This one contained a direct reference to his very first menswear collection in the close up print of raffia weave used in roomy blousons, pants, and bags, but that archival gesture was not the point. “The collection surely recalls the past, without making it all about the past,” he said afterwards.Yes, the long almost shirtlike cut of the light jackets, as in this season’s Emporio collection partially informed by his consideration of Asian dress, had the same fluid elan of those famous pieces worn by Richard Gere so many years ago. And, yes, the four suits that closed this otherwise very holiday collection contained some silhouettes that any long-in-the-tooth Hollywood rep will fondly recall from the pre-Netflix glory days. However you could just as easily conjure the image of this collection being worn by a new generation, in a new context, with stories of their own to tell.Collarless jackets in gently textured seersucker, lattice framed grip bags, layered logo silk shirting and foulards, silkily flowing oversized pearl-toned trenches, slingback loose-weave espadrilles, breezy separates in tie-print silks, and a garment dyed indigo twinset were amongst the wearable narrative devices offered. Armani said he had his models carry their straw hats rather than wear them because they are more of a beachside piece than something for the city: similarly he said he avoided shorts.Just before those suits, a near-all white section included an especially magnificent field jacket and cargo pants. This was Armani turning back to his blank page and readying his pencil for the next chapter. As he pointed out, it is by filling those blank pages, over and over, that he taught himself how to become a designer in the first place.
19 June 2023
EntitledCipria, or face powder, this lovingly precise Giorgio Armani collection’s foundation was his consideration of the personally intimate rituals of self-care and beautification. As has become customary, the show was held in the basement of Armani’s own palazzo: the 200-seat room has a faint but tangy scent of ozone that suggests some fabulous personal spa facility is not so far away. Almost as tangibly, the intimacy of the setting transmitted a supremely serene creative confidence, just as some of the more bombastic shows we are exposed to telegraph a lack of it.The showspace was laid out in charcoal-veined marble tinted gray, off-white and blush pink. The lights came up to illuminate the first three models seated and standing on a cushioned bench, chatting, as if unobserved in a powder room. Then the first model swiveled decisively and walked out in the first look of 74; she wore a black beret (there were many more ahead), a loose one-buttoned trench and a high-rise track pant in camel, and black patent toed oxfords. As upon all the models, a gentle spectrum of carefully applied color bloomed around her eyes.There were several key ingredients and processes in this Armani collection’s formula, which presented inter-related groups of looks that seemed often to be signified by the choice of earring. The two key decorative motifs were a sketched flower and an abstract group of finger painted lines in the same colors as the marble: those patent toed flats and perspex heeled sandals sometimes matched the surface they stepped on near-exactly. There was a side serving of leopard—a rare spot at Armani—that was prefaced by a cappuccino-colored silk pantsuit and high jacket that featured abstract spots that could either have been animalia or based on blotted lipstick prints.Texture was a focus-point for experimentation; slivers of faux fur were cut against angular strips of silk in a jacket whose contours mirrored the angular resin bangles whose colors again reflected the baseline palette. Several garments including wraps and hats were edged with generous fringing. A short, black-armed jacket was fronted with slivers of pink fabric placed around black diamonds to create a pattern that, as at the menswear show this season, evoked typical Milanese domestic decoration.Tailoring pieces were inflected by Asian traditional shapes, a decades-old Armani reference point.
Outerwear tailored pieces were consistently cut with two high vents running up to each hem in order to create free and easy movement. At the last a model came out in a fringed hat and full length dress in narrow strips of what looked like leather and a black crepe etched periodically with crystals. As she walked she held up her compact and considered her makeup. Mr Armani rarely strays from his lane, but why should he? After all, it was he who built the road in the first place.
26 February 2023
Shortly before Armani’s now traditional runway show sports-diffusion interlude—here at Giorgio it was Neve, while at Emporio it was EA7—Milan’s 88-year-old master menswear architect discreetly showed his hand. Out came two three-piece suits, one blue and the other black, in a silky looking material whose movement suggested they were almost certainly shot through with technical ingredients. Each was delicately to (the point of imperceptibly) crinkled with raised rivulets of irregular lines. These appeared almost identical to the veining of the marble backdrop and runway installed in the desinger’s Via Borgonuovo palazzo for this show.As later confirmed in the notes, this was a Giorgio collection that took subtle inspiration from the architecture of Milan. The narrow paneling in leather bags, lightly padded jackets, a mixed-material sweatshirt, and even some of the ski pieces reflected the ground-floor rustication you will see in many of the city’s pre-war buildings. The geometric gridding and zigzags worked into jacquard knits mirrored the many beautifully marble-inlaid communal spaces in buildings across the city. And the richly textured gray wools, velvets, and cashmeres used in the opening sequence were this collection’s equivalents of the finely carved gray stone doorways through which you must pass to see them.This was the conceit, but it was not overplayed. You gradually suspected that the audience was positioned as hisportieri, or doormen, in order to observe a steady procession pass the runway threshold dressed in a manner characteristic of Armani’s this-season conception of Milan-born menswear. That contemporary version naturally related back to his mid-’70s conception of it, but the refurbishment was full of fresh pleasures and unusual touches. Business or casual, evening or day, and post-ski weekend too, almost every inhabitant—arguably except for the pair in full length faux-fur animalia coats and wraparound sunglasses, who seemed out-of-towners up to no good—were patently inhabiting Armani’s architecture of style.Every look was a differently appointed edifice designed in that architectural school. Nehru-collared high suiting in velvet topped cuffed pants cut to taper and shaped by pleat, both above the paneled velvet sneakers in black or burgundy that were one of a series of returned-to footwear foundation pieces.
A blue-accented suit in Prince of Wales was shared between two looks, worn (pants only) against a gray melange zip-up jacket and again (jacket only) north of flowing herringbone pants cut wide.Visitors seemed variously to be returning from military service (in a highly stylized but attractively functional riff on the uniform) or country weekends (high boots, wide-brimmed Alpine hats, and shearlings). After the ski-party had rolled home, five male-and-female model couples clustered at the end of the runway as if meeting by chance on the way up to a party. They passed through in deformalized black velvet suiting and crystal accented evening wear, one woman toting a bag stitched with a portrait of the designer who had invited them here. Then that host came out in person to greet his guests. This was the second hit in a one-two of strongly styled and much admired Armani episodes this season.
16 January 2023
“The essence is a certain purity and the glimmer of gold. There is a very subtle shimmering of gold that crosses the whole collection, giving it a very charming and unique light. A light that calls to mind the sand of the desert.” So came the quote from Giorgio Armani’s office before a show that delivered a gentle transcultural trip across his softest iteration of womenswear. Titled Fil d’Or (Golden Thread), it opened with a series of richly fabricated, snowy silver looks accented with gold-tone high-top sneakers and bags, and closed with an eight-strong group of diaphanous goddess-meets-genie gowns that sparkled with golden sequins and crystals.In between these two sections, the collection roamed far and wide, with passages of deep azure blue and looks that seemed to mesh transcultural references, drawing from garments as diverse as the kurta and the cheongsam. There was a great deal of embellishment, tasteful sheerness, and an overall emphasis on lightness and comely volume. At some points it felt hippie-luxe; at others like high-end modestwear.Beaded dresses, sequin and stone embellishments, silk zip-up shirting and dresses, and necklaces heaped with clear resin “stones” added occasional points of hard definition before that shimmering golden finale. As Mr. Armani, 88, said after a show whose audience included Cate Blanchett and Lauren Hutton: “A few years ago it was out of place to wear outfits with paillettes during the day, but now it is accepted. The important thing is to wear it well.”
25 September 2022
Giorgio Armani continues to WFH. Happily, however, Milan fashion’s OG can now once again have us join him in that home. Before this morning’s mainline show in the intimate Via Borgonuovo basement space under his HQ and alongside his own house, Mr. Armani gathered for a celebratory photo call with the Olimpia Milano squad. The Armani sponsored Milan basketball team clinched its 29th national championship yesterday, and joined us in the audience today.Sitting downstairs courtside in that fashion arena a few minutes later, we saw some classic Armani plays unfold. In the palest of greiges and not-quite-pastels he deployed a broad range of soft-shouldered suiting over long flowing shirts. Mr. Armani said he was tired of sneakers, so instead there were derby sandals with cut-out uppers and velcro-fastened espadrilles. Jacket shapes ebbed and flowed back and forth between notched double-breasted and shawl single.A tree-print silk shirt signaled the transition into more playful variations on the Armani standards. There was a great deal of fabric research in a collection that experimented with colors and patterns, sometimes pretty radically: you don’t often see purple at Armani. A brace of blousons worn with ties suggest that Mr Armani was once again chipping away at the codes of formalism. Jacket shapes echoed menswear paradigms from India to South East Asia: from the cool of Mr. Armani’s basement we were traveling without moving.
20 June 2022
The Giorgio Armani show opened with a voice reading a statement from the designer in English: “My decision not to use any music in the show was made as a sign of respect to the people affected by the evolving tragedy.” As silence fell on the intimate underground runway at Via Borgonuovo, a sense of solemnity and sadness filled the room. This week, demonstrators have been waving Ukrainian flags and anti-Putin signs outside show venues, utilizing the global exposure of Fashion Week to protest the Russian invasion. Today, Armani joined them, becoming the first designer to directly use his show to lament the atrocities. “What could I do?” he wrote in an email after. “I could only signal my heartbeat for the tragedy through the silence. I didn't want show music. The best thing is to give a signal that we’re not happy, to recognize [that] something disturbing is happening.”In fashion, we’re accustomed to loudness on every level. When somebody switches off the noise—either literally or figuratively—silence speaks louder than words. Armani designed his collection weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, but there was a softness and stillness to his silhouettes that echoed the quietness of their surroundings. As he said, “I think the clothes became even more powerful through the silence.” The collection exemplified elegance through reduction. Languid silver tailoring oscillated with mercurial grey flou in garments accentuated only by the subtle twinkling of crystals. As models walked, silk skirts draped softly around their ankles and tiers of beaded fringe rustled in the peaceful space.Tailoring and dresses constructed in cubic prints and intarsia couldn’t help but draw the mind to the 1930s, a recurring symbol this season. As on other runways, the motif was perhaps reflective of Armani’s mindset during the collection’s design process, no doubt affected by the escalating fears of conflict, which culminated in this week’s invasion. For this designer, however, wartime isn’t simply a reference. It’s a memory. Born in 1934, Armani was eleven years old when the Second World War came to an end. He has experienced war on European soil, and the tolerance, diplomacy and elegance that embody his life’s work are products of a mind borne out of a wartime aftermath that most of us could never imagine.This season, those everlasting values manifested in a timely softness.
It translated into technical ideas like the lapels of a super light women’s tuxedo constructed so it looked like they were sliding off her shoulders, or the faint laser-cut patterns of soft faux shearling coat. In fabrication, it took shape in icy velvet men’s tailoring and in enveloping cuddly outerwear, like an ivory robe quilted like rope and a plush velvet men’s robe with a pinstriped back panel. Beyond Armani’s verbal statement and gesture of silence today, there was a quiet, poetic dignity to this collection. In February 2020, his brand became the first to cancel a show out of caution over Covid-19. Two years on, as the most senior designer in the industry, he once again demonstrated the sensitivity and responsibility that will become part of his legacy as a man with his heart in the right place.
27 February 2022
Giorgio Armani founded his label when he was in his mid-40s with cash raised from selling his VW Beetle. That was when I was two years old. In the time since, he has built the largest single-shareholder company in all of fashion, and—I would say unarguably—established his place as the most important and influential designer in the world. He is no fool.Recently, Mr. Armani has been sending us messages. For his last Giorgio menswear collection and this week’s 40th-anniversary Emporio outing he appeared at the shows’ end with those he has anointed to carry the Armani torch in the future. Tonight, however, he reminded us all of where it all began. For the first time in over 20 years, Armani showed in the small basement room of his own Milan house (OK, it’s a palazzo). For those in the audience who were there the first time around, this brought back happy memories. For those of us who weren’t, it pressed the point that we were in the company of the father of Italian fashion.The collection was built on a simple yet profound notion, a love for the sea and sun. This is a big deal for Armani, a man whose tastes run moreazzurrothanceleste. The models were asked to smile, old-school style, as they sauntered as if from the beach to the yacht on a midsummerpasseggiata. Some of them had been modelling for Mr. Armani for years, and for most the smiles seemed as unforced as the clothes seemed restrainedly designed.To a soundtrack of Italian maritime classics we saw a progression from flowing separates to cinched-waist sylph dresses. There were sections of aqua-tinted greige, a gorgeous top printed with the reliefs of flying swallows, and patterns that knowingly deconstructed Armani’s signatures into segmental decoration. When members of the audience clapped certain looks with suspiciously synchronized enthusiasm it was a comforting reminder of a ceremony long forgotten elsewhere. Mr. Armani came out for his bow and wave as the projected oceanic backdrop faded to a sunset. The man himself did not appear poised to dip behind the horizon anytime soon, but like the last two shows, this one was an acknowledgment that the horizon is there.
25 September 2021
For Giorgio Armani, the big reset has made a big impact. “Personally, I have learned to enjoy things more and to work day by day, not planning too much ahead nor stressing too much. And I have to admit, it’s been very healthy for me,” he wrote in an email before his first show with an audience since February 2020. Those were significant words for a self-declared control freak, and the impulse we’ve seen from Armani over the last year has been a great color on him. This collection was no exception.Rather than going back to where he left off—the monolithic HQ Teatro that seats 800—he invited 80 people to where it all began: his own home, and former headquarters, on Via Borgonuovo 21, where some of his most legendary shows took place. (You know it was important to him because he had put up with set builders and sound rehearsals intruding on his domestic idyll for two weeks leading up to it.) Back in the day, Armani would host shows in the palazzo’s underground runway room, an early blueprint for the Teatro with 300 seats and an adjacent one-lane swimming pool for morning laps.In the courtyard’s Japanese garden, steps away from Silvio Pasotti’s mural of a shirtless Armani immortalized alongside his 20th-century contemporaries (Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Liza Minelli), he showcased what his distilled mindset means for the Armani wardrobe: subtle, supple, sophisticated, and a little bit sexy. Presenting the collection on a model cast that felt more directional than usual, he deconstructed his formal silhouette and loosened sharp lines with a sense of what ‘sportswear’ looked like before the mid-century. Maybe that’s what formalwear looks like in the 21st?The sensibility was casual without crossing into the territory of lazy. “The overall attitude is very light, because I think we have all learned to be informal and more relaxed in the way we dress,” Armani explained. He took a stance against the conventional suit, offering new generations—as well as old—an updated dress code to live by: “Reimagined, so it is no longer composed of a blazer and a pair of trousers.” Now, Armani believes that a ‘suit’ can just as well be a shirt and a trouser in matching fabric, or a generational blouson-and-trouser combo.
21 June 2021
Last year, when I asked Giorgio Armani if the current crisis had brought back wartime memories, he said, “Not really.” As the only working designer who lived during the Interwar Period and remembers the Second World War, Armani—born in 1934—has a no-nonsense approach to a hopeful fashion climate that likes to throw around operatic parallels to the Roaring Twenties or the New Look of ’47. He thought about his collection for our reemergence from lockdown this fall with the same caution and stoicism that made him the first designer to cancel a show amid the arrival of the pandemic exactly a year ago this week.Of course, “I certainly designed this collection with better times in mind,” he wrote in an email, but the casual-sporty silhouette that defined the women’s proposal—austere, broad-lapeled tailoring and coats, ladylike parkas, soft breeches, and sarouels—was decidedly sensible minded. And yet it was a quirkier proposal than the restrained and very beautiful poetry that embodied his haute couture collection last month. The spiral ruffles that adorned many garments had some sprightly optimism to their bounce, and glitter and crystal moments were clearly tailored to a party mood.The men’s silhouette embodied an idea of the transitional wardrobe—not the seasonal kind but our impending shift from sofa to sidewalk. Unstructured jackets that could practically have been shirts or cardigans negotiated comfort and formality, backed up by sweaters patterned in a motif of square color blocks we might coin Mondriarmani. “Our habits of dressing have been impacted by the requirement to stay at home. We may have started to value comfort and ease more and more in our outfits,” said Armani.“This has somehow worked in my favor, as comfort is something I have always seen as paramount to the success of my work. If you feel comfortable in your clothes, you feel confident. But the dressing-down trend will have done nothing to dent our desire to look good and our craving for beauty and elegance. And do not forget, you can still be elegant even if you are dressing in a more casual and relaxed way,” he wrote. “However, I do predict that when we are allowed to pursue our lives in a more normal way, there will be a resurgence of dressing up as people socialize again. And in this context, elegance never goes out of style.”
27 February 2021
Last year, when I asked Giorgio Armani if the current crisis had brought back wartime memories, he said, “Not really.” As the only working designer who remembers the interwar period and lived through World War II, Armani—born in 1934—has a no-nonsense approach to a hopeful fashion climate that likes to throw around operatic parallels to the Roaring Twenties or the New Look of ’47. He thought about his collection for our reemergence from lockdown this fall with the same caution and stoicism that made him the first designer to cancel a show amid the arrival of the pandemic exactly a year ago this week.Of course, “I certainly designed this collection with better times in mind,” he wrote in an email, but the casual-sporty silhouette that defined the women’s proposal—austere, broad-lapeled tailoring and coats, ladylike parkas, soft breeches, and sarouels—was decidedly sensible minded. And yet it was a quirkier proposal than the restrained and very beautiful poetry that embodied his haute couture collection last month. The spiral ruffles that adorned many garments had some sprightly optimism to their bounce, and glitter and crystal moments were clearly tailored to a party mood.The men’s silhouette embodied an idea of the transitional wardrobe—not the seasonal kind but our impending shift from sofa to sidewalk. Unstructured jackets that could practically have been shirts or cardigans negotiated comfort and formality, backed up by sweaters patterned in a motif of square color blocks we might coin Mondriarmani. “Our habits of dressing have been impacted by the requirement to stay at home. We may have started to value comfort and ease more and more in our outfits,” said Armani.“This has somehow worked in my favor, as comfort is something I have always seen as paramount to the success of my work. If you feel comfortable in your clothes, you feel confident. But the dressing-down trend will have done nothing to dent our desire to look good and our craving for beauty and elegance. And do not forget, you can still be elegant even if you are dressing in a more casual and relaxed way,” he wrote. “However, I do predict that when we are allowed to pursue our lives in a more normal way, there will be a resurgence of dressing up as people socialize again. And in this context, elegance never goes out of style.”
27 February 2021
Does fashion make the people come together? For a business knocked for its supposed elitism, it’s a bold question. But in a season when brands have largely had to rely on livestreams, Giorgio Armani opened his arms to the public a little bit wider. The designer and national treasure chose to broadcast his main-line show on the Italian TV network La7 as a gesture—no doubt—of rebooting an industry bruised by the pandemic.Armani was the first designer to cancel attendance for a fashion show when COVID-19 hit Milan in February 2020. “I suspect, as someone who has lived a life and had a great deal of experience, I have probably developed a sense of when things are genuinely serious and need a response,” the 86-year-old wrote in an email before this evening’s broadcast, which opened with a short film narrated by Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino, revisiting Armani’s all-time most “timeless” moments.The designer spent lockdown observing a typically regimented daily routine, which he detailed in his email. “I continued to wake up early, do some exercise, have breakfast, read the papers, and then I’d go through some emails,” went just a couple of lines from the complete account, too brilliantly extensive to publish in full. But this was his point: Armani is too much of a veteran to let a pandemic faze him. He has lived through war and built an empire that he is not about to abandon.This season he gathered the Italian public and his international audiences around something to which they can all relate: Giorgio Armani—the longest-working designer in fashion—and the women and men who wear him. Expressing a message of timelessness central to a moment in which ideas about investment pieces and style consistency are key, Armani exercised a grayscale tone-on-tone approach to dressing, which felt universal—like a canvas for application.“She is still concerned with looking good and feeling comfortable and confident,” Armani wrote of his post-lockdown woman. “And if anything, her desire for beauty has been sharpened by the experience of having so much beauty denied to her through having her movement and activities limited. Giorgio Armani has never been about dressing up (or down for that matter) in any conventional sense. Instead it has been, and remains, all about creating a timeless elegance that brings out the character of the wearer. That has not changed.”On the women’s as well as the men’s side, daywear was soft, casual, crinkled: democratic tailoring, if you will.
Voluminous shapes were adorned in chilly coral-like surface decoration, sumptuous and muted all at once. Slouchy pajama-like silhouettes evoked the comfort-wear adopted from quarantine. For evening, suits were sharpened and sculpted. Languid dresses looked mercurial, an effect echoed in outfits of separates in textures silky, shiny, and shimmery. It was style over fashion. And maybe it was all the silk and slo-mo, but it was somehow incredibly zen.Now, Armani wrote, “I simply and sincerely hope that we will learn from this experience and that we will use it as an opportunity to rethink and reset. Where the industry is concerned, in my opinion, we have been due for a reckoning for a while now. Concerns like waste, the environment, too much product of poor quality, a marketing-driven approach that can lead to a disconnection with what the consumer really wants…” he paused. “I hope that fashion will now review its priorities, learning from this experience.”
27 September 2020
Does fashion make the people come together? For a business knocked for its supposed elitism, it’s a bold question. But in a season when brands have largely had to rely on live-streams, Giorgio Armani opened his arms to the public a little bit wider. The designer and national treasure chose to broadcast his mainline show on the Italian TV network La7 as a gesture—no doubt—of rebooting an industry bruised by the pandemic.Armani was the first designer to cancel attendance for a fashion show when COVID-19 hit Milan in February 2020. “I suspect, as someone who has lived a life and had a great deal of experience, I have probably developed a sense of when things are genuinely serious and need a response,” the 86-year-old wrote in an email before this evening’s broadcast, which opened with a short film narrated by the Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino revisiting Armani’s all-time most “timeless” moments.The designer spent lockdown observing a typically regimented daily routine, which he detailed in his email. “I continued to wake up early, do some exercise, have breakfast, read the papers, and then I’d go through some emails,” went just a couple of lines from the complete account, too brilliantly extensive to publish in full. But this was his point: Armani is too much of a veteran to let a pandemic faze him. He has lived through war and built an empire that he is not about to abandon.This season, he gathered the Italian public and his international audiences around something to which they can all relate: Giorgio Armani—the longest-working designer in fashion—and the woman and man who wear him. Expressing a message of timelessness central to a moment in which ideas about investment pieces and style consistency are key, Armani exercised a gray-scaled tone-on-tone approach to dressing, which felt universal—like a canvas for application.“She is still concerned with looking good and feeling comfortable and confident,” Armani wrote of his post-lockdown woman. “And if anything, her desire for beauty has been sharpened by the experience of having so much beauty denied to her through having her movement and activities limited. Giorgio Armani has never been about dressing up (or down for that matter) in any conventional sense. Instead it has been, and remains, all about creating a timeless elegance that brings out the character of the wearer. That has not changed.
”On the women’s as well as the men’s side, daywear was soft, casual, crinkled: democratic tailoring, if you will. Voluminous shapes were adorned in chilly coral-like surface decoration, sumptuous and muted all at once. Slouchy pajama-like silhouettes evoked the comfort-wear adopted from quarantine. For evening, suits were sharpened and sculpted. Languid dresses looked mercurial, an effect echoed in outfits of separates in textures silky, shiny, and shimmery. It was style over fashion. And maybe it was all the silk and slo-mo, but it was somehow incredibly zen.Now, Armani wrote, “I simply and sincerely hope that we will learn from this experience and that we will use it as an opportunity to rethink and reset. Where the industry is concerned, in my opinion, we have been due for a reckoning for a while now. Concerns like waste, the environment, too much product of poor quality, a marketing-driven approach that can lead to a disconnection with what the consumer really wants…” he paused. “I hope that fashion will now review its priorities, learning from this experience.”
27 September 2020
Giorgio Armani postponed its presentation this season due to concerns over the coronavirus COVID-19. In these extenuating circumstances,Voguehas made an exception to its policy and is writing about this collection from photos.At the end of this Giorgio Armani show, the swooning notes of Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody On a Theme of Paganini” played as 12 willowy Chinese models came onto the floor of the theatre. They were wearing archive pieces from Armani’s couture spring privé collections from 2009 and 2019, both of which were inspired by China; this was a statement of sympathy and solidarity. Then, Mr. Armani came out in his regulation runway uniform to lift one hand in the air and then raise both arms to his sides in acknowledgment of his audience.Except, of course, his audience wasn’t there. Mr. Armani decided to spare his guests the hazards of mutual proximity out of fear of the coronavirus, a decision that proved divisive in Milan today. However, considering that this evening’s games featuring local Serie A soccer teams were cancelled, and that the schools in this city are closed for the next week, it was not inconsistent with the mood of extreme caution currently prevailing in Lombardy.Digital media has become a key transmitter of fashion, but nothing really compares to being there. Through my phone screen, I can see that this was a powerfully Armanian show—lots of black velvet punctuated with floral camouflage and glitter. It is also interesting to see the view from the camera booms that usually swoop over our heads in the gloom of the theatre. Here’s hoping that next season, we will be back with Mr. Armani to see it for ourselves.
23 February 2020
Before there was EA7—the technical sportswear Emporio offshoot whose ski/snowboard branding is seemingly on every lift in the Italian Alps—there was Giorgio Armani Neve. The ’90s label, long on ice until it was quietly revived in 2018, scaled the highest peak of the Armani range today with a series of looks that opened a show entitled “Tactile Impressions.”Unlike most contemporary snow brands, Neve eschews feather—piumino—to fill its garments, which it instead layers in cashmere and wool. The mostly black pieces here came in velvet and more cashmere, plus some wool pinstripe, and despite a few nylon pieces were an overwhelmingly an attractive non-synthetic proposition. As the models walked past, one with a snowboard, there was not a whisper of the polyamide hiss of leg brushing leg. They walked around a central installation that looked like an enormous tray of ice cubes half melted. Whether Armani was making a less figurative ecological point than this season’s R-EA (recycled Emporio Armani) moment was not clear. What was is that the piece was made of repurposed plexiglass from his storefronts.Once the Neve thinned out came a section of day looks, some of which absolutely flew: the strongest and most wantable menswear at Giorgio Armani in recent memory. This section was rich in tradition in that it reworked old-schoolcappotto di montone(long, loose mountain-designed shearlings that are specifically Italian but here were shelled in green velvet, greige wools, and other variations) and gently checked wools and cashmeres. The double-breasted nehru-collared cashmere jackets that came layered over matching waistcoats and pants were deconstructed but defined—as most jackets here—by exposed seams at the shoulder line. Pants were totally deconstructed apart from their ankle cuffs. Two abstract leopard-print cashmere/wool looks in particular resembled highly embraceable fleece suits. At various points Armani played with paisley seeds, zigzags, and other cheerily après-ski patterns.A series of suits and elevated tracksuits in olive velvet were badly served by the Armani Teatro’s lighting. Where they had looked deep and rich backstage they reflected brittle white on the runway. Also in velvet close to the end were two jumpsuits with racing zips. These seemed anomalous but might have been a nod to the Ferrari Formula One driver Charles Leclerc, who was here alongside Taron Egerton. If Mr. Armani has any downtime booked post shows at his pad in St.
Moritz, he can head there contented. This was chill.
13 January 2020
Giorgio Armani turned his Pre-Fall presentation into a rather epic series of events. Though he didn’t fly press and celebrities to an extravagant location as has become customary for megabrands to do, he treated guests to a flurry of entertaining activities at his various headquarters in Milan.The day started with the opening ofAccent of Style, an exhibition of accessories that the designer personally curated in the minimalist spaces of the Armani/Silos. It encompasses an impressive 40 years of his work, from the late ’70s to today. While Armani’s clothes exude a sense of measure and discretion, the accessories (shown not in chronological order but as a visual continuum, displayed by chromatic and stylistic themes) reveal the more eccentric, experimental, and even irreverent side of the designer’s approach.The occasion also marked the launch of Armani’s first high jewelry collection, presented in a suite at the Armani Hotel in Milan’s city center. Graceful shapes of stars and flowers were rendered in white or black diamonds, black onyx, and white or rose gold, in a series of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and rings, looking delicate and discreetly expensive.The main event, of course, was the Pre-Fall show, held at the Tadao Ando–designed Armani Teatro, where the designer’s signature, huge and brightly lit, seemed to float in mid-air. The collection, called Transformism, conveyed a free-spirited attitude. “It’s about a woman who wants to transform herself following her moods and feelings,” explained Mr. Armani, who at 85 is as fit and sharp-witted as ever. “When one thinks about my style, subtle changes, and slight adjustments come to mind. Here, I wanted to give women more freedom to be different. And I wanted once again to play on mixing genders.” Nobody can deny Armani his game-changing role in redefining the masculine/feminine dynamics and in pioneering a modern fashion language, which decades ago set a framework for today’s gender-fluid aesthetics. In the Pre-Fall collection, he seemed to hit the refresh button on the theme.The collection was (not surprisingly) an ode to the pantsuit, with jackets offered in a multitude of iterations. Masculine blazers were softened and cut as relaxed as shirts or were hybridized into elegant bombers in geometric-patterned jacquard velvet.
A double-breasted jacket in thick chevron knit was nipped at the waist and softly hourglass-y, while classic black tuxedos were proposed in abbreviated versions for everyday, worn with sporty, ’80s-inspired ankle-cropped pants. The play on shapes alternated between short and boxy and elongated and fluid, from more rounded to slender. The designer’s flair for bold accessorizing was on full display.Evening was equally expressive. A slender, ankle-grazing satin tunic in silver gray and velvet pajamas in a vivid shade of lacquer red had a languid sensuality, while a sequin-tasseled capelet gave an opulent allure to an otherwise simple black silk blouse paired with slim velvet trousers. A few red carpet numbers were sequined and shimmering, yet even if richly embroidered and styled with gusto, their slender silhouettes exuded a very Armani tendency for balance and poise. The leopard can’t change his spots.
14 November 2019
Titled Earth, this Giorgio Armani collection began on the designer’s most expertly cultivated and manicured territory—suits, two of them, in griege, then brown—before adventuring toward a climax packed with references both mineral and vegetable (but not animal—this house has been fur-free since 2016). Prior to the lineup’s bracing upstream rapids, it began with a placid cruise through some luxuriously utilitarian daywear, including a navy silk zippered parachute pant teamed with a brown leather–front, blue–shouldered jacket. There was also a section of appealingly textured squidgy handbags.Long, strapless silk dresses were layered over opaque pants with necklaces of cascading woven beads. Another parachute pant, this one smoky gray, was worn with a pale green bow, a ruffle-edge vest, and a necklace of a long, looping metallic cord. The earthiest we got for around 20 looks were the brown accents and the pragmatic wearability of much of it. Then a sleeveless Nehru-collar shirt and long skirt in brown with green abstract foliage curls signaled a shift that led via double-leg black pinafore culottes to an increasingly lush series of diffuse tropical leaf prints, metallic coruscations, and those mineral flourishings played out in tulle scrap scarves and hems. The defining colors—griege and navy apart—were malachite green and halite pink, and much of the full, furling organza twists or intensely beaded embellishments had an organically cultured spontaneity to them.This was the second presentation, following this summer’s menswear, that Giorgio Armani has held at his Palazzo Orsini property. The intimacy of the venue and the daylight that floods its courtyard served to force us to look again at the work of a designer who has been so scrutinized over the years. From the hair to the handbags to the high level of adventurousness in the clothes, this show bore that scrutiny well. Backstage, preshow, I was hovering in the wake of Suzy Menkes when Mr. A caught sight of his longtime colleague. She asked him to talk about it, and via eavesdrop, my rusty French concluded that he said this: “It’s modern but not too extravagant. There’s something in it that’s brave.”
21 September 2019
Cool AF in a wide lapeled, cuff-legged, off-white seersucker suit, Samuel L. Jackson said before this show: “I’ve been wearing Armani since about 2000— when I did the firstShaftmovie. For years and years, having seen the name Giorgio Armani but being a poor actor in New York I hadn’t been able to afford it. And then all of a sudden, there you are, you are in it—the amazing realization of a style pinnacle.”Jackson grew up with a sense of fashion thanks to his mother’s job as a buyer—“she dressed me in classic styles, so I was the odd kid”—but even for those with no fashion knowledge this designer’s three-syllable surname is a synonym forstyle. Today for the first time in nearly 20 years, Armani held his mainline menswear show on Via Borgonuovo in Brera, his headquarters for decades. This street is so much his that editors arriving for Tom Ford’s showroom presentation on the very far corner of it beforehand were regretfully informed by security and police that no cars were to be let through unless on Armani business.The building we were in, Palazzo Orsini, was purchased by Armani to replace his original business HQ (now his home), a few palazzos down the road. It is only one of several he has purchased with the fruits of his 45-year-career. The collection was, as ever, built around the tailoring he once did so much to transform. Here it began with a series of blue-accented brown suits in linen or softly patterned jacquard, a color that he had reputedly never majored in before and whose introduction was inspired by an old photograph of Visconti.Soon enough the collection relaxed into house blue but there were surprising jolts of gridding in loose shirting in blue and silver check or GA monogram with double rows of small round buttons. Patched-color sweaters mixed terry cotton with fine gauge knit, and there was a check pant in irregular rectangle patches of blue, pink, red, gray, and olive that was unusually color-intense for this label. A handsome high notch-collared, almost professorial jacket shape was revived from, oh, maybe a decade ago.The women’s looks on show were taken from Armani’s Resort collection that was shown in Tokyo last month. Fronds of coral-beaded jewelry used as top-pocket ornament were also lifted from that collection.
A new nautically themed capsule entitled Mains after both Armani’s yacht and—its ultimate origin—a childhood nickname given to his mother featured pleasant treated cotton work jackets and top stitched double-breasted suiting in white and blue. A near-the-end grouping of models wearing jaunty neckerchiefs, softly treated T-shirts, and rolled-leg printed silk shorts added to the bay-hopping vibe. At the finale Jackson was firing off pictures on his smartphone as Armani emerged to applaud his models and take our applause in return. At his usual fashion theater, he looms out of the dark only briefly before stepping back into it, but here he paused a while to enjoy this deservedly acclaimed homecoming.
17 June 2019
Giorgio Armani’s love affair with Japan goes way back, to when he first came to the country as a young designer in 1982. The appreciation has always been mutual. Armani is a superstar in Japan; people stop him in the streets, asking for autographs and selfies.“The Japanese are more Armani than Armani,” the designer joked. His business in the country is remarkably solid, with 90 points of sale, 34 of which are in Tokyo. In 2007, he opened the majestic Armani/Ginza Tower here. Its sleek glass façade and marble interiors were first designed by the Italian architects Massimiliano Fuksas and Doriana Mandrelli Fuksas; last year, it underwent a renovation masterminded by the designer himself in collaboration with his team of architects. Two additional Armani Casa floors were added and the ready-to-wear and accessories floors were given makeovers. The shimmering building was reopened on Thursday with a cocktail reception and a dinner in the revamped rooftop restaurant.To celebrate the reopening, Armani decided to present his Resort 2020 collection in Tokyo. It was a first for the designer who has so far shunned the current trend of mega-brands staging spectacular productions in far-flung locations. “I do not agree with this,” he said at a press conference before the show. “After all, Resort collections are mainly commercial; they have to be salable and appeal to buyers.” Armani speaks his mind and does things his own way. Case in point was the location he chose for the show: Tokyo’s National Museum, which houses one of the most precious and rare collections of Japanese and Asian art.The show was a glamorous affair à la Armani: no pyrotechnics, but a first-rate attendance of Japanese and international celebrities. Uma Thurman was glowing in the front row, together with Japanese archi-star Tadao Ando, a longtime collaborator of the designer. A few days ago, Leonardo DiCaprio looked dashing in an Armani tuxedo at the Cannes Film Festival. Movie stars flock to the label, which was among the first to acknowledge the brand-building power of Hollywood’s mega-stars.The Resort collection focused on a daywear offer built around Armani’s soft tailoring repertoire. Fluidity was paramount, as was a sense of ease, which he cultivated with a balanced approach between purity of lines and a feminine, slightly eccentric flair for decoration.
“I think that the secret of my success is to brush against provocation and then somehow back down, restoring harmony and aesthetic composure,” he explained.
24 May 2019
For tonight’s coed Giorgio Armani show we moved across Via Bergognone to the Armani Silos, the sprawling exhibition complex the designer opened pretty much at the same time that Prada opened its Fondazione in 2015. Titled Rhapsody in Blue, the collection was a languid exploration of smoky reliefs and pencil-sharp silhouettes played out on a dark mirrored runway.With the occasional exception of a padded velvet overcoat over a hammered silk shirt (in blue), or a chevron-etched suede bomber (in blue) or a large-hooded piumino over a pant of puckered crushed velvet (blue too), the menswear here—via a section of luxury utilitywear accented by leather-framed safety goggles—mostly stayed true to the key architecture that Armani both revolutionized and revived: suiting. It went from an opening section of Vitruvian-precise double-breasteds into a loose trousered flirtation with single-breasted jackets into a blue-busting section of black tuxedos.The more exuberant ornamentation came in the womenswear. Atop pants cut slim or with jodhpur eruptions at the quad, Armani served a pre-millennial nightclub’s worth of smoky whorl and twist. From the bunched swirls of leather on the square-toed boots to the glinting shivers of midnight blue pattern under mesh on jerkin tops, or the hard exhalations of leather ruffle on handbag straps, or the meandering back-and-forths of leather peplum, this was an overwhelmingly dark collection packed with playful decoration. Bow-belted pleated pants were served south of a silk shirt in shifting clouds of midnight blue. A double-ruffled leather collar furled forth from the neckline of a leather-piped black velvet jacket. The swirls slowly settled into abstract flowers etched in purple beads or mirrored enamel, before an evening section featuring one multitiered narrow-cut gown but which focused mostly on velvet pants and extravagantly decorated one-shoulder tops.
24 February 2019
For tonight’s coed Giorgio Armani show we moved across Via Bergognone to the Armani Silos, the sprawling exhibition complex the designer opened pretty much at the same time that Prada opened its Fondazione in 2015. Titled Rhapsody in Blue, the collection was a languid exploration of smoky reliefs and pencil-sharp silhouettes played out on a dark mirrored runway.With the occasional exception of a padded velvet overcoat over a hammered silk shirt (in blue), or a chevron-etched suede bomber (in blue) or a large-hooded piumino over a pant of puckered crushed velvet (blue too), the menswear here—via a section of luxury utilitywear accented by leather-framed safety goggles—mostly stayed true to the key architecture that Armani both revolutionized and revived: suiting. It went from an opening section of Vitruvian-precise double-breasteds into a loose trousered flirtation with single-breasted jackets into a blue-busting section of black tuxedos.The more exuberant ornamentation came in the womenswear. Atop pants cut slim or with jodhpur eruptions at the quad, Armani served a pre-millennial nightclub’s worth of smoky whorl and twist. From the bunched swirls of leather on the square-toed boots to the glinting shivers of midnight blue pattern under mesh on jerkin tops, or the hard exhalations of leather ruffle on handbag straps, or the meandering back-and-forths of leather peplum, this was an overwhelmingly dark collection packed with playful decoration. Bow-belted pleated pants were served south of a silk shirt in shifting clouds of midnight blue. A double-ruffled leather collar furled forth from the neckline of a leather-piped black velvet jacket. The swirls slowly settled into abstract flowers etched in purple beads or mirrored enamel, before an evening section featuring one multitiered narrow-cut gown but which focused mostly on velvet pants and extravagantly decorated one-shoulder tops.
23 February 2019
After years of streetwear, the tide is apparently turning. Tailoring is getting renewed attention, including from a younger generation of designers and customers. Giorgio Armani, whose influential aesthetic has since the ’80s provided working women with an elegant everyday uniform, is obviously in an ideal position. His archives are bursting with the kind of soft-tailored blazers and elongated, almost liquid pantsuits that feel of-the-moment. So much so that Kaia Gerber has been spotted wearing an Armani blazer, paired with a cool pair of shorts.Yet nostalgia wasn’t the name of the game for Pre-Fall here. Instead, the Armani classics were given an updated, energetic spin via the use of vibrant colors and reworked graphics, while shapes were kept fluid and fabrics almost weightless. The timeless pantsuits looked fresh, their checkered textures a new take on archival prints. As for the evergreen blazer, it was proposed in slimmed-down versions, malleable and soft as a sweater, and paired with knee-length Bermudas or with shorts-skirt hybrids. A sense of ease was apparent throughout the collection, which riffed on the familiar masculine-feminine dynamic, a territory pioneered by Armani and still mastered with style. Cases in point included a tailored jacket in a micro-checked pattern worn with slim pants in an exuberant floral jacquard, and a rather chic griege trenchcoat with a discreet play of ruffles. Another example was a double-breasted houndstooth blazer cut with relaxed precision in a shimmering sequined texture; worn pajama-style atop a pair of fluid track pants in dove gray velour, it would look cool both on a young girl and on her elegant mother.
10 December 2018
Fresh from Thursday night’s Emporio Armani epic around-the-world-in-a-hundred-grays (and many more house shades, besides) show, Giorgio Armani returned home to Via Bergognone today. This collection was like that familiar whoosh when you sink gratefully into your favorite armchair after a long trip away: utterly recognizable and enveloping.The collection felt subaquatic. In the darkened Armani theater, the opening section of spotlighted silver semi-transparent pieces—sometimes softly strafed with whorls of smokily muted color—seemed to flit down the runway. A coat of woven strips of leather had a sharkish toughness. A pink-edged, coral-like wide-brimmed hat and a pink-edged encrustation of ruffle on the chest of a dress signaled the dive into this collection’s central exploration of color and texture.Layered metal and plastic jewelry plus the net-like bags and shoes with slick and shiny uppers of scrunched PVC added an undersea otherworldliness in tandem with the models’ bunched, salty Pre-Raphaelite hair. A balloon-hemmed vest top teamed with pants of reflective, liquid-like organza was patterned with circular multicolored sequins that resembled a rainbow of raindrops on water. The model in a pink bomber decorated with oyster-shell gray and pink embellishment and a triple-layered, ruffle-detail gray skirt handily caught an anemone-esque pinned earring as it fell loose from her left ear.By the end, we were voyaging in mermaid territory: The opaquely multicolored sheen, reef-like banks of ruffle, and silver fish-skin shine of Armani’s often multilayered fabrications combined beguilingly. This was a collection to dive into.
23 September 2018
Giorgio Armani today revived one of his original ’80s logos, a softly contoured overlaidGArather than the more assertively angled iteration we’re used to, and returned to the seminal soft-shouldered, broad-beamed, double-breasted silhouette that put him on the map back in the same decade. Looking back? Sure, but only to chart a course forward.The double-breasted jacket was used as a piece of casual outerwear, a loosely comfortable garment that displayed the fossilized skeleton of its formal origins. A gray pinstripe version worn over no shirt at all and some abstract-print pants was a typical context shift, designed to switch an emblem of old, hard masculinity into a garment that remains relevant in a tilted new world.Those Japanese-inspired wide pants at the beginning in moleskin (teamed with a ranger-style workwear vest that ran through the show in different fabrications) were evidence that Armani is aware of menswear’s nano-trends—it was a shape that transferred with more fluidity into cupro tuxedos. There were strong sections in indigo (including some jeans with a gather just above the back of the calf that made for a new pant silhouette, plus a great minimal parka startlingly worn with Mary Janes) and a sort of abstractedly striped greige seersucker.Some of team Armani’s styling decisions can distract. Once you’ve seen a pair of backwardly worn suspenders, for instance, it’s hard to unsee. And this, in turn, can detract from the impact of the clothes. Sticking with suspenders, there was a pair whose line of fit was integrated into the pattern of the pants worn below them, which was a genuinely fresh way of sketching the wearer’s contours:eccentricofor a reason.The pale silk printed blousons, shirts, and pants near the close were especially beautiful movements in a collection whose strength was in its softness. A black backpack came stitched with Armani’s portrait, shortly before its subject emerged in person from behind the show space curtain.
18 June 2018
“Celebrating self-expression” is the ubiquitous concept on which many fashion designers rely today, sometimes just jumping on the “empowering women” bandwagon and banking on the achieved-the-hard-way confidence with which women are embracing their own individual style. Yet Giorgio Armani has to be credited as being one of the first who really understood women’s need for a versatile yet assertive uniform, providing a stylish armor to fight their battles for recognition and social status. He started his company in 1975. Pantsuits have come a long way since then, even if that glass ceiling hasn’t been cracked completely open just yet.Armani’s style has remained remarkably consistent throughout the years; timeless is an apt concept to describe its essence, passing trends just brushing over its surface without altering its spirit. The Resort collection was just another version of the tune the designer has played for so long, yet it exuded a soft, fresh vibe. A gentle sportswear-infused flair was smoothed by fluid shapes, lightness of volumes and fabrications, and a delicate color palette of dusty pinks, mauves, cerulean blues, and silver-grays. His go-to tailored pantsuit was rendered in a supple, almost ethereal interpretation, but its pragmatic nature was well in evidence, highlighted by a day-to-night attitude that blended formality with ease and comfortable proportions. In the same way, the Armani signature blazer was transformed in a silky ruched jacket-blouse worn with crinkled silk wide-leg trousers, or morphed into a tuxedo shirt-jacket in white charmeuse, elongated at the back and paired with chic black velvet palazzo pants.The sporty attitude turned polished in a malleable jersey bomber worn over a languid silk charmeuse maxi dress, which could easily transition from a cocktail to a less formal occasion. The collection provided a series of elegant numbers, as in an ankle-grazing chiffon pleated dress in aqua blue, elongated tunic in shimmering gold jacquard, and embroidered pink organza flared-skirt evening dress, all three of which looked both delicate and glamorous.
11 June 2018
Giorgio Armani was a god to the army of American executive women in the 1980s. He harnessed the power of the greige pantsuit, the idea that this subtle uniform would arm women as they crashed through glass ceilings on their then-thought-imminent progress to equal pay and equal rights with men. Well, a generation later, with that struggle still nowhere near won, many designers are looking back to the classics of ’80s power-woman style this season. It’s an odd source of inspiration, this one—begging the question, “Why should what didn’t work the last time around have any more effect now?”Anyway, in 2018, Giorgio Armani is still designing in greige—and dusty rose—as on this runway, but the daytime power suit has been dissolved into softer layers. Oddly, it was an alternative sense of the 1980s that transpired—the cocoon coats that used to be seen at Romeo Gigli and the bubble skirts that made Christian Lacroix’s name way back when. After this nod to a re-assimilated past, he got down to business. What stood out in this collection was the eveningwear: his crystal-beaded, embroidered, and fringed jackets, contrasted with black velvet. Finally, the pièce de résistance was a great merge of Armani tailoring and glam: a crystal-studded pantsuit. It could well armor a non-girly woman on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. In the age of #TimesUp, there must be plenty who are scanning the collections for an alternative to the strapless, encumbering “red carpet” gown.
24 February 2018
Backstage, pre-show, Giorgio Armani was focused on last-minute adjustments: tugging a gray abstracted check shoulder clean of a crocodile backpack strap, undoing the bottom five buttons of a vest so that it showed the knit beneath, rejecting a jacket last minute in favor of a cashmere vest over a sleeveless zip-up mock turtleneck. “It’s a memory of everything beautiful that has been done in the past,” he observed of the collection he was fine-tuning. “Lots of different atmospheres.”The shearling aviator caps clutched by a couple of models—one in a brown crocodile jacket, the other in a rugged blue-tinted gray velvet overcoat—were the most literal clue to one of the atmospheres this collection navigated. Baggy combat pants in fluffed mohair checks, velvet corduroy, and subtly jacquarded or plain wool blends, or loose pin-tucked non-combats were either poppered at the hem or tucked into socks over tractor-soled, single-strapped, 10-hole boots. Longhair shearling duffle coats with patches, ridged black leather blousons, patinated calf aviators, and velvet great coats were just a few elements in an eclectic squadron of substantial outerwear sent out with crocodile or calf flying gloves.In tailoring there were a few semi-conventional sorties in executivewear: A group of blue suits with a slightly more defined shoulder were cut in the narrow, eight-button, notch-lapel, double-breasted jacket shape that ran through this collection—sometimes in deconstructed cashmere, sometimes in complicated fabrications including a flocked check. These looks were placed above single monk strap shoes with squared-off but rounded corner panels. The show closed with a line of velvet evening suits in blue, black, and bottle green whose satin-fronted notch/shawl hybrid collars were popped as kind of integrated cravats. This gently innovative intervention was typical of a beautifully fabricated collection that allowed only the most calculated stylistic diversions to threaten any turbulence to the undisturbed smoothness of its flight path.
15 January 2018
Charisma, seductive sobriety, authenticity. These are the words that summarize Giorgio Armani’s Pre-Fall collection according to the press notes, but they could easily apply to the designer’s entire oeuvre. Armani’s longevity is built on his rigorous style and firm aesthetic beliefs.A play between masculine and feminine elements was the backbone of the collection. This stylistic dualism feels utterly contemporary, so much so that it has somehow become commonplace, but Armani did it before anyone else. It surfaced in a double-face cashmere wrap coat, neatly tailored and worn with a silk blouse and short Bermudas, or in an oversize black silk parka paired with fluid, soft velvet pants printed with an abstract motif of fireworks. Touches of kidassia and Mongolian fur highlighted the sensuous vibe. And a dash of chic eccentricity was apparent in a tailored suit, its elongated and fitted leather blazer printed in a snakeskin motif, which was in turn printed over with abstract floral patterns. Paired with cropped checkered pants and worn with pointy booties, the jacket had a classy, modern verve.
21 December 2017
A tailored suit is designed to frame and showcase the body within in its own cast-in-cloth Vitruvian harmony. At Giorgio Armani, the garment the designer once so radically recast to alter the popular perception of that harmony is often used as the frame of his runway shows. Armani might be a man—and a brand—of many, many categories, but tailoring is the touchstone.Today, though, Armani turned things inside out. Most notably, apart from a mid-show section of six or so gray-to-silver abstracted check jacquard jackets—cut long and loose with comfortable dimpling at the soft shoulder line and complemented by some fluidly tailored menswear pieces to telegraph the provenance—suiting was a lightly drawn brushstroke.Instead, Armani emphasized dressmaking that displayed its guiding hand, combining prints that echoed the aesthetics of canonical artists with fabrications that played the technologically advanced against the handmade. The gilet of the first look and the shoulder piece and waist of the second imposed an aesthetic and literal tension between the horizontal pull of the black elasticated ridges and the release of the layered white floral-printed silk ruffles. The jackets in Looks 7 and 8 were cut by laser in black double-bonded treated silk. The layer beneath the silk was a floral print, excavated in floral sections by more laser cutting and then surrounded by even more precise lasered etchings that shaved only halfway into the black top layer. The print of the silk pants in Look 7 and rope-belted shirt in Look 8 (the model wore fine-whale silk corduroy pants) looked to be an homage to the work of Joan Miró. The popper-fastened jacket in Look 10 imposed a hand-applied leather lattice over the same print. Two skirts worn under strapless horizontal-neck black bodice tops were hand-pieced together in strips of contrast-colored leather plissé. Three looks—two dresses and a jacket—featured large petaled red blooms on a soft pink backdrop that referenced Miró’s sizable sculptures. In the first dress, a patch of this jacquard at the right thigh was semi-furled and folded to add volume to an otherwise surgically unadorned mid-length garment.First in a necklace, then on the shoulder piece of a black mid-length, hand-patchworked, double-face silk tent dress, stripes of red, black, printed, and sheer fabrics were a 3-D and color-injected cousin to the iridescent 2-D mosaic intensity of Klimt.
Later—after the silver and gray jacketed section—came the lightest menswear asides: A one-shoulder mid-length dress and another full-length dress immediately afterward were cut in strips of leather that were interjected with metallic pinstripes. They were embellished with floral blotches applied with Pollock-esque apparent lack of design. Toward the end, Armani drilled down into a nocturne suite of little black dresses, whose net-veiled beaded headpieces heralded the arrival of a final outré flourish: a pastel top comprised of angular panels that came garlanded down the right shoulder with an assemblage of wattle-like nubs in pistachio and violet.
22 September 2017
“Made in Armani” read the letters projected onto the runway backdrop. So apparently Giorgio Armani has founded his own nation-state—let’s call it Armania. After more than 40 years of carving out his own fashion topography as the single shareholder in Italy’s greatest privately held house, it makes perfect sense.Today we flew from shore to shore for a snapshot survey of Spring 2018 Armania, the territory below us on the runway defined primarily by color, then texture and fit. The survey began with a long section of stone, silver, and grays. Landmarks included a long double-breasted trench in a crushed and crunchy linen mix, a high-cut peacoat in nubby gray wool, an iridescent silver notch-lapeled suit, and a series of high-hemmed jackets with a silky fish-skin gleam that half obscured roughened check patterns below.A third of the way into our flight we banked into clear pale blue, a maneuver signposted by a double look of white on blue and gray micro-cable knit T-shirt tops with jersey sleeves over blue wool pants. A pale blue shirt under a golden jacquard jacket and blue and gold plaid pants extended the territory.Then, after a brief beige interlude, we hit a punchily jewel-toned equator that played softened amethyst against sapphire against turquoise in a series of knits, suits, and patterned tailoring. A turbulent passage of patterned knitwear brought us to a long, smooth descent through the blue again, via pale blue cotton worksuits—Looks 56 and 57 were this writer’s pick of the collection—into navy executive suiting, casual seersucker jackets, chevron and dotted navy knits, a navy suede field jacket, and a double look of two hybrid cardigan-shirts. We landed in a suite of six looks as pristinely white as the sands of Lampedusa’s Spiaggia dei Conigli.Mr. Armani’s signature was written on large leather totes and a pale blue T-shirt worn with a silvery jacket. You didn’t need to spot it to know this was Armani country.
19 June 2017
Colors were brighter, fabrics were lighter, and fun and freedom were in the air at Giorgio Armani’s Resort presentation, which had a more youthful than usual spirit. Armani made his mark by redefining tailoring for both sexes, fusing comfort with a sleek, unfussed elegance. More than 40 years later, he continues to play along familiar lines. Yet like the endless variations a talented music composer can layer into his signature melodies, making them new without ever altering the tune, he managed to bring about a refreshing vitality to his new collection.Inspired by the surrealist artist Joan Miró, the designer injected his typical masculine/feminine dialogue with touches of bright colors: Poppy red, porcelain blue, magenta, apricot, and peony pink were paired with more subdued shades of black and gray. Shapes were kept feminine and easy, as in a long dress in layered chiffon embroidered with shattered crystals. The play on techno fabrics versus natural fibers highlighted the experimental attitude that has kept Armani firmly rooted in modernity despite his decades in the business. Crisp silk had a papery texture, while organza was smoothed with an almost liquid feel, as in a luxurious pajama suit printed with watercolor motifs. As for his signature suiting, a short, shapely jacket in red silk jacquard had a round, revealing décolletage lined in contrasting print; worn with a pant-skirt hybrid in see-through pink techno silk, it conveyed a sense of polished sensuality.
9 June 2017
Isabelle Huppert, a Best Actress nominee for the Paul Verhoeven filmElle, wore a pale pinkish white crystal-embroidered dress of weightless, unstructured organza from Armani Privé to last night’s Oscars ceremony. The French star made more than one best dressed list, Vogue.com’s included.Around 12 hours later, Giorgio Armani was on another stage, that of his Teatro Armani; his show caps off Milan Fashion Week. In a Fall season in which designers are taking a renewed interest in the suit, he found ways to refresh the tailoring that forms the backbone of his sprawling empire via color, texture, and silhouette. His exploration with shape held the most surprise. In all the years he has been putting his stamp on the suit, we can’t remember a plissé skirt–tapered pant hybrid (with the skirt in front, the pants in back) come down his runway, but here he made the concept a key element of his show. It could catch on. Color-wise, he exhibited continued interest in the brights he showed at Emporio Armani last week, segueing from a zesty red to equally vivid shades of green and blue. They stood out on the catwalk, but in real life, it will be the shades of gray that his customers respond to. The abundance of soft and hand-spun fabrics such as velvet and fuzzy mohair suggests that Armani, like many others this season, is prioritizing comfort.The pants story continued into evening, with the designer pairing high-waisted silk trousers and small embroidered tops in an of-the-moment fashion. The lights went down and a single model emerged, wearing an allover embroidered dress that managed to look as light and effortless as a T-shirt. In that sense, it was not unlike Huppert’s red carpet stunner.
27 February 2017
Whether applied to history, evolution, geography, or fashion, the idea that the path of change is shaped like a spring—an endlessly circling loop that shifts a little every revolution back and forth—holds true. Sometimes, very rarely, that spring kinks in a great leap forward. Within the micro-universe of fashion, Giorgio Armani sparked a leap worthy of the cover ofTimemagazine (back when that was a big deal), when the utterly self-assured aesthetic he’s had since childhood sparked a widening and softening of tailoring in the early 1980s, fashion eons ago.Today’s Giorgio Armani collection showed that 35 years later, this now-82-year-old retains a progressively flexible capacity to intuit, process, and react to the endless circling and shift. In a nearly 100-look offering, the Armani antenna commenced by broadcasting several scene-setting soft gray suits—one double-breasted, one single—cut with longish jackets and wide carrot pants. What he did then made now. Then a double jacketing—red velvet worn over gray wool—signaled the riot of layering ahead. “Sleeve scarves,” two disembodied tubes connected by a membrane of differently textured knit, were used in recurring salvos as top layers (although they would be easier to wear under a coat). Armani proposed the hoodie as waistcoat under a soft-shoulder jacket, partially unzipped from both sides, with contrasting shirts underneath. He pitched at a feminine, four-button jacket shape with an opening that reached only inches below the throat, worn above a soft pink velour shirt. The few women’s looks featured consistent pops of color and contrast—loving the dog jacquard jacket—but the men’s rarely ventured beyond inky greens, browns, grays, and blues. Under the Teatro Armani’s eye-altering lights, this made it tricky to fully appreciate how the marled wools, woven tonal check wool blends, velveteens, crackled and crispy treatments, velours, and mohair conspired to deliver a cacophony of complementary textures. Also impossible to see from the front was the relaxed silhouettes underpinned by his easy pant shapes and fitted but free shoulder lines. Outerwear was dark and imposing and, with the exception of the furs, aggressively unadorned.Hip-hop artist Future, who was born a year after thatTimecover was published, sat in the audience after meeting Mr. Armani at aGQ Styleshoot last year. What was his reading? “I feel it’s way ahead of the curve. It shows he’s always ahead of everyone.
Especially the furs around the neck. And the sleeve wraparound was crazy: I could see me wearing that on a daily.” Armani’s way is never entirely to be set in his. Perhaps this is why he has outlasted so many less creatively limber designers to be a giant of the past who stays relevant to the present and appeals to the future.
17 January 2017
Giorgio Armani had arguably the biggest night of any designer at theGolden Globes. He dressed surprise Best Actress in a Drama winner Isabelle Huppert in a crystalline Privé top and icy gray silk skirt, and nominees Naomie Harris and Janelle Monáe also wore his dresses. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see one or more of those stars in his front row during the couture shows later this month. But the Pre-Fall offering for his main line paid just glancing attention to red carpet fare. A nipped-waist black column with embellished short sleeves could make its way to theSAG Awards, as could a similar silhouette with a fully embroidered bodice.For the most part, this collection was tuned to a more daytime-appropriate key. Armani flexed his athleisure muscles, turning out mohair sweats that he paired with a one-button blazer and satin track pants that unzipped to the hips for a fuller shape with a three-button topper. On other pieces he turned up the color; a representative for the brand reported that an acid green double-breasted coat was popular with Armani’s wholesalers. Outerwear pieces cut from elaborately woven jacquards in underwater and Peruvian landscape motifs were no less bold. For the client who will find them a bitde trop, he had a softly constructed black pantsuit tipped in white.
9 January 2017
The lights went down inGiorgio Armani’sTeatro and the back of the runway lit up with the wordcharmani. His program notes explained its meaning thusly: “the lightness of the body, seductively revealing itself, finding a new balance between discipline and freedom.” What that translated to on the catwalk was an emphasis on filmy fabrics in watery florals and iridescent textures that variously evoked scales, fishnet, and moonlight on the sea. Shorts were double-layered, the print encased within transparent silk for a bubble-like effect. (As enamored as Armani is with shorts, they’ll always be a hard sell.) Jackets for the most part had the ease of cardigans, fastening at the neck. There was fringe everywhere, and the outfits were accessorized to the hilt: large sun hats worn off the head, sunglasses, gladiator sandal–boot hybrids that extended halfway up the calf, earrings galore.A few guys walked the runway in mismatched suits and trainers. Men are a somewhat rare sight at Armani’s womenswear shows, but they were especially welcome here after his excellent men’s collection in June. There was a clarity to his men’s jackets and pants, a compelling effortlessness, and his somewhat overwrought women’s day clothes didn’t necessarily benefit in comparison. What exceptions there were were found in the small evening offering at the end. A skirtsuit was looking right for after dark these days. The designer’s charming version features a sharply tailored jacket and wrap skirt in an over-embroidered deep navy print. And if you want gala-ready sparkle, be it in the form of an oversize blazer or a slinky column, he’s still your man.
23 September 2016
Three’s a trend. After Prada and Gucci devoted their Spring 2017 menswear shows to modern journeymen,Giorgio Armanititled his Crossing Borders. A trail of lights illuminated an imaginary path into the distance. In isolation, it’s unusual, because Giorgio Armani is remarkable as the most Milanese of designers—he wasn’t born here, but his earliest fashion experience was, in the windows of the city’s La Rinascente department store. More than his own geographical location, it’s the ethos of Armani that feels Milanese, a breed of minimalism indebted to rationalism. Hence, whenever Armani globe-trots, it is seen through very specific eyes.In actual fact, sometimes the Armani label can seem a country unto itself. It can never be forgotten that the fragmented identity of Italian fashion comes from a country only unified from disparate states and courts in the late 19th century. Even then, it took almost 60 years. Before then, warring factions and wealthy dynasties—the Medici, the Sforza, the Borgias—controlled their own fiefdoms. Not so different from, say, the fighting between the families Ferré, Versace, and indeed Armani back in the 1980s, jostling for the supremacy of the prosperous contemporary kingdom of Milanese fashion.The rites and rituals of the duchies of Italian fashion are as diverse as their liveries—but they all uniformly worship their leaders. Donatella Versace and Miuccia Prada elicit whoops and cheers as they bow at the close of their runway presentations; today, it took the mere presence of Giorgio Armani’s face on a sweater for the loyal factions to erupt in thunderous applause. You wonder what visitors to the Crown State of Armani—today, actor Kevin Spacey and Latin musician Ricky Martin—make of the whole spectacle.Like any ruler, Armani quashes discussion of dynastic succession—there are enough stories of the vengeful assassinations of Roman emperors to discourage anyone from talking about who may be ruling the empire in his stead. So instead, Armani continues, designing clothes after his much-imitated template, a template that revolutionized menswear way back when and now has settled into easy familiarity.For the second time this week, after his Emporio show, Armani emphatically reiterated his style codes—his bleached-out, subdued palette of colors; the relaxed silhouette, with jackets hugging but never gripping the body. Looking not for novelty but for continuation.
The injection of not only a sportswear feel but actual honest-to-goodness sporty items into this, Armani’s more formal main line, perhaps showed a bowing to a new, 21st-century definition ofrelaxed, where a nylon parka rather than a dropped linen shoulder spells casual. The shoes crossbred a technical sneaker sole with a suede moccasin, crossing borders between formal and casual.Armani saw the Caribbean in his whorling geometric motifs scrolling through jacquard knitwear. I couldn’t. Perhaps that’s because Armani looks out—from his runway, from his backstage, from shirts on his models’ backs—and we look in. He sees the world in his shows. We see only Giorgio Armani.
21 June 2016
For Resort,Giorgio Armanirevisited his iconic tailoring, taking the shoulders as a focal point and working around a deconstructed look. The elongated silhouette was easy to wear and soft, grounded by trousers that ran the gamut from voluminous, slouchy heritage shapes to more up-to-date, sporty cargo-inspired to slimmer, softer versions. There was a feel of a ’90s vibe running through the lineup, but the overall effect was modern. The masculine inspiration was softened with a fluid flair; suits and jackets were feather light and malleable.The Armani allure was apparent in the color palette of delicate neutrals—dove gray, sand, and aqua, with hints of pale turquoise—and in the choice of natural fibers and jacquard textures, which highlighted the sense of polished comfort. For evening, the designer let loose a more feminine vibe, favoring a youthful look with short or ankle-grazing skirts paired with small tops. The shine of metallic fabrics and paillette embroideries enhanced the sense of chic lightness, a case in point being a long layered slip dress whose understated glamour would be perfect for a summer soiree.
2 June 2016
Giorgio Armanitriumphed last night at theAcademy Awards.Leonardo DiCaprio, a longtime friend of the brand, picked up his long-awaited Oscar in an Armani made-to-measure peak-lapel tux. While Charlotte Rampling didn’t win for Best Actress, her understated Armani Privé sheath won this reporter’s best dressed prize.Cate BlanchettandNaomi Wattsalso wore Armani. The designer’s ties to the movie business stretch back decades; he was one of the first to understand the power of celebrity and put it to work for him.This morning’s Giorgio Armani collection concluded with a smattering of starry evening looks, black velvet sprinkled with crystals and laser-cut into floral lace, that will make it onto a red carpet in the very near future. Not the last look, which was puzzlingly bare under an embellished beret and a frothy tulle cape, but certainly the three strapless gowns and probably the plunge-front, décolletage-baring number—that style had high-profile adherents at the Oscars.For the most part, though, this collection was a study in how to make black velvet a viable option for day. Armani cut it in full leg styles cropped above the ankles and as sporty track pants with athletic ribbing pared back to tweedy pastel or greige jackets. Otherwise, he matched it with watercolor florals or a textural jacquard. Not groundbreaking or boundary pushing, but chic enough and on trend. Seasonal relevance is hardly a concern of Armani’s these days. Nonetheless, this show situated him in the midst of the Fall conversation in Milan, where velvet turned up on several other runways.But back to Hollywood. There’s a famous shot of Faye Dunaway poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel in a silk robe and heels the morning after her win forNetworkin 1977. Fast-forward almost 40 years. Can’t you just picture Rampling and co. slipping out of their Armani red carpet frocks and hiking up Runyon Canyon this morning in a pair of the designer’s black velvet sweats?
29 February 2016
Habitually,Giorgio Armanitakes his runway bows in Milan sporting navy—a sweater or a T-shirt. The hue was the linchpin of his Fall 2016 collection, as it has underpinned his career and the wardrobe of the Armani man. Why? Because navy is classic, unobtrusive, and universally appealing, all timeless hallmarks of the Armani aesthetic.Time has little meaning for Signor Armani. As the Western world revolves around a Gregorian calendar, climates rising and falling, Armani operates on his own. He’s the rare designer with the power to do so; let’s call it the Giorg-orian calendar, which apparently moves at a much slower pace, standing outside of fashion. This show was once again an expression of Armani’s absolute singularity: He interspersed his male models with female, perfectly matching couples where, perhaps, velvet faced his lapels and was stroked in a thick lobe across a cocktail dress for her. It gave the impression of an Armani universe, one that runs parallel to our own, but entirely separate.Of course, the clothes weren’t from a different planet. They were Armani classics, ideas that have gestated long and transformed slowly over time. So the cashmere, vicuña, and alpaca Armani showed today, seemingly similar to those from 20 years ago, revealed infinitesimal variations, subtly indicating the passage of the seasons other designers adhere to so rigidly. They were cut wider, shorter in the body, frequently double-breasted, and subjected to washing processes that broke down the surface of the fabrics, softening the whole. Another expression of time.Is Armani interested in time? In 2015 he celebrated 40 years in the business, the year after his 80th birthday. As other designers discuss the reworking of historical styles to create modern garments, Armani essentially rediscovers his own history, season after season, refining his classics, creating the future from his own past. Armani stated that this collection, interspersed with motifs culled from northern Africa and the Mediterranean, and inspired by imagery of William S. Burroughs in a crumpled suit somewhere in Tangier, was about a journey. A voyage into Armani—a slow trek, a midnight (blue) train to Giorgio.The subtle, slow-burning evolution evident in an Armani show—sometimes stuporous, but here more languorous—raises wider, larger questions.
How much do people really want something ripped apart and entirely reengineered year after year? At what price novelty? I suspect Giorgio Armani considers each and every one of his collections entirely new, dreamed up from scratch. He recognizes the difference in them all, even if we don’t.
19 January 2016
Giorgio Armanidubbed his Pre-Fall lineup Bohemian Rhapsody, but don’t let the name fool you. While there was a great-looking midi-length pleated dress in a floral motif and a solid navy option, he didn’t give short shrift to the tailoring that he’s famous for. On the contrary, Armani had fun with the elements of a suit, finding ways to shed nearly all of their business-y associations, be that by cropping the pants well above the ankle, designing a jacket with zip-off sleeves, or cutting a two-piecer in black velvet or a pinstripe fabric with a glossy sheen. (Armani is showcasing more traditional tailoring in a collection called New Normal, which will be celebrated in Paris during the couture shows.) Eveningwear wasn’t a big part of the story this season, but the pieces he did show exuded the ease and youthfulness of a slip dress, a quality accentuated by the opaque black tights and boots the light blue version was paired with. Meanwhile, a multicolored fringed coat with faux-fur lining and a floral jacquard coat and dress put the bohemian in bohemian rhapsody.
6 January 2016
Giorgio Armanicontinued his 40th-anniversary festivities this afternoon with a press conference and lunch in honor of his new self-titled book of family photographs and personal remembrances. The 81-year-old designer was in a celebratory frame of mind, even making a joke about his nose: “I was born with it,” he said, pointing to the baby picture hanging behind him onstage. But if the press conference was a moment for reflection, and his recently opened museum is the repository for four decades’ worth of designs, today's runway show wasn't the walk down memory lane that might've been expected.Instead, Armani chose a color little associated with his work, red, and made it the focus of a collection that was also noteworthy for its lightness, a quality that happens to be synonymous with him. His notes specified shades of flame, lacquer, and geranium, and more often than not he juxtaposed them with navy, icy gray, and white. Coupled with graphic treatments like woven stripes, polka dots, and lozenge embroideries, the palette gave the show a shipshape clarity quite in contrast to the hazy pastels of theEmporio Armani collection he presented last week.Where the Emporio show was awash with pants, here he was interested in walking shorts and abbreviated, full skirts. The trousers he did put on the runway were almost sheer and layered over opaque leggings for a look that was more discreet than seen elsewhere this season. (A see-through skirt or two showed off more than he probably bargained for.) Tailored one-button jackets in that same filmy material were the best pieces in the collection. Though they were rather elaborately stitched with glinting glass beads and silk cord embroidery, they, too, looked airy and weightless, a real feat.
28 September 2015
If the Emporio show the other day suggested Giorgio Armani was feeling rootsy, the presence of Robert De Niro in today's front row compounded that, even if the actor didn't look particularly enthralled by the passing parade. Too bad, because it was actually a vintage Armani presentation.The show notes posed it as a reaction to contemporary men's fashion. "Fake rules set by a media consensus," those notes pointedly declared. Such aggressive contrariness might be an Armani staple, but it belies the serenity of the clothes: the muted colors, the body-limning caress of the jackets, the suits as easy as pajamas. Armani's omnipresence has turned all of this into cliché, but it didn't exist before him, and that is surely the salutary import of these shows in his 40th year in business. And it is scarcely as if the man is resting on his laurels. What stood out about the show today is how Armani continues to unstuff menswear. There was scarcely a shirt in sight. Waistcoats closed diagonally over bare chests. And if that effect had a certain indolence, the generously pleated volumes of the trousers sustained it. So did the fishermen's sandals.At one point, a model pushed a bicycle around the runway. The Emporio presentation had Vespas lined up in the lobby. If Armani wanted to make a point about a more organic response to city life, a bicycle was certainly it. But there is something organic about his clothes. The collection of womenswear he showed alongside the men's clothes today is apparently called the New Normal. If that means commonsensically human, then all power to it—and the man who made it.
23 June 2015
We already know Giorgio Armani is something of a Francophile. He likes Coco, he likes Cocteau, and with his new Resort collection, he was expressing his admiration for the Parisian chic of Inès de la Fressange. The straight line of the shoulder, the slim silhouette, the red-white-and-blue-ness, the matelot stripes lending a hint of St. Tropez…yes, all of that might have echoed the insouciant grace of Inès, but the rest of the collection was A-grade Armani. Emphasis on the A. A coral pantsuit sported the subtle branding of an A-shaped cutout in back. But A was also for Arts and Crafts, as in the intricacy of a waistcoat woven from red, white, and blue ribbons, or the collarless coat similarly woven from ribbons of leather. And A was also for Asia. That coat was accompanied by wide pants that were knotted down the side seam, a detail that was reminiscent of something you might wear to practice Japanese martial arts. In fact, the knot was the leitmotif of the collection, most strikingly when a black jacket dramatically lined in red sported a knotted lapel. As Armani's oblique take on the more feminine bow, it was a reminder that the designer is always adding his own twists to the conventions of dress.
5 June 2015
There is always a mini essay waiting on your seat at a Giorgio Armani show, an explanation of the whats and whys of the latest collection. But today there was nothing. Armani wanted his guests to come to their own conclusions. In 2015, the 40th anniversary of his business, we can probably expect to see more of this, more of the designer pleasing himself. There were a few clues in the wind—brushstrokes, the work of Marc Chagall—and the strongest part of the show was indeed a passage of evening pieces, swirling with "brushstrokes" of embroidery like a Chagall painting. They were beautiful. In fact, when Armani stuck to pants, the evening looks were the best in show, a myriad of sparkling jacket options.And there's your conclusion. With four decades of design in mind, Armani was making a strong, simple statement that was completely in character: jackets and pants. After the show, he said simplicity with strength was often the toughest thing to pull off. But Armani knows this road better than anyone. If he indulged himself with some oddities—the waist-clinching cummerbunds, the free-floating collars, the pants that sprung a sarong wrap—he also played to his strengths with dozens of the fluid, gently curving, slightly cropped jackets that are signature pieces for him. And the rest: the double-breasted; the swingy A-line; the elongated, vaguely North African ones, all of them showing Armani's mastery of muted, alluring blues, purples, and grays. The strength also came from new textures for him, like the big square paillettes of leather or suede that made up a couple of jackets, or the bouclé, the fringing, and fur.Armani starts work on his next collection tomorrow. Asked if he felt he had anything left to prove, he replied, "Doyouthink I have?" The question was the answer.
2 March 2015
Couples strolled Armani's catwalk today, hardly a new thing for the designer, but he'd called his new collection Romance, which did rather put one in mind of woosome twosomes. Except that the romance in this collection was actually between Giorgio and menswear. He was looking for "the essence of male beauty," a noble fashion quest. And the measure of its success was that you could say in all honesty that the men looked just that:beautiful.If luxury has a cloth and a color, it may well be the deep pile velvet in a shade of mushroom (is that better than greige?) from which Armani cut a jacket in his latest collection. There were crocodile and vicuña too, but Armani's velvets have a life of their own, speaking to a state of mind that cares nothing for utility and everything for indulgence. The extreme softness of these clothes—and of the Emporio Armani collection the other day—was about cosseting, not challenge. Paradoxical, really, when you think that Armani built his empire on a dismissal of fantasy, an embrace of the real. But you could allow him a reflective change of heart in this late-period collection (the man is 80 years old, after all, and the business is turning 40). Those velvets evoked the soft, sheeny Art Deco fantasias of the Hollywood he loved as a child. And there was something of that in the silhouettes too: the trousers tapering from pleated volume at the waist to a narrow ankle, the jackets fitted and three-buttoned.After all this time, Armani is still experimenting with silhouette, like his hybrid of blazer and blouson. But equally, it is memory that sustains and shapes his design sensibility. This was a silver-screen glamorous collection. The eyes of the models were shaded like Valentino's (Rudolph, not Garavani). There were fur scarves, even a stole, to add texture to the luxe. Armani also made room for another romance: his love affair with his hometown. The gray of stone, the brown of brick, and the dark green of Milanese moss colored the clothes. And if they were melancholy, that was because beauty is melancholy too—something Armani has known from the day he first picked up a sketchbook.
20 January 2015
You go to a Giorgio Armani show to see how he's going to rethink the suit. He's been doing it for four decades. Pre-Fall is presented informally in his Meatpacking District offices, not at his grand Milan Teatro, but there were developments to observe. Micro prints, long a part of his repertoire, made a comeback on jackets and pants. The Armani heritage is so rich, but he's not really one for looking back. Not even when his 40th anniversary came and went in 2014. Sure, there were parties, but he'd never do a retrospective collection. Elsewhere, Armani was interested in exploring novel shapes, as in the pantsuit with an asymmetric wrapped skirt over the narrow trousers, or surprising materials, such as a leather jacket, the front of which was quilted with flowers. That little number was striking, but it's hard to deny the simple appeal of a collared shirt and black crewneck tucked into expertly cut high-waisted pants.
4 December 2014
Giorgio Armani has already proved he has the power to corral Oscar-winning directors. Paolo Sorrentino was the latest. Honored for his epicLa Grande Bellezza, he dialed down to intimate for Armani with a short film that opened the show: two naked bodies entwined in rope on a beach, in a primal landscape like the Aeolian Islands off Italy's southern coast, a part of the world that Armani loves.Sabbia, the film was called—sand. Like the collection. But the darkly erotic scene set by Sorrentino was rapidly supplanted by Armani's abstract opalescence. Sand, yes, but expressed in a monochromatic world of python print, floral-embroidered diaphanousness, and the striated patterns created by wind on dunes.Much of it was extremely beautiful. Layers of fabrics so supernally light that they were scarcely more than a shimmer had an almost alien quality. Armani added crystals and paillettes and spectacular bias draping. The show notes stoically resisted any suggestion of exoticism, but the sparkly-dress-over-diaphanous-pant proportion had an Orientalist quality so irresistible, it compelled some onlookers to Google Wiki the echo.There was one, small, easily overlookable detail that lingered as a testament to Armani's extraordinary control at this point in a career that straddles contemporary fashion like an Italian colossus. It was the single toggle closing on a high-collared jacket. The rest of the jacket buttoned, but that toggle sat by the high collar. Precise and, in a peculiar way, kind of poignant.
20 September 2014
Giorgio Armani's shows are usually accompanied by a page of text to clarify—or sometimes confuse—what we've just seen. Today, there was a single word:echoes.Time is once again the major player in the Armani drama—the company turns 40 next year, and the designer himself is only a few weeks shy of his 80th birthday. The past echoes; the future beckons. Somewhere in the middle, this collection took shape.It was purest Armani, from the soft, belted coats that opened the show to the dark suits with checked shirts at the end—a low-key finale that was much more reflective of the reality of men's lives than a passage of evening looks. Realness is the most resounding echo of all. It's been ringing out all over Milan this week, so it was appropriate that Armani, who made a real new man, should put his own full stop on the calendar. The cardigans with their narrow lapels; the deep-pleated, cuffed pants; the double-breasted jackets with their soft but strong shoulders—everything subtly, smokily shaded. They were clothes for the quotidian. But those looming anniversaries provided an opportunity to reflect on how the everyday has changed since Armani started his business back in 1975. He was always the master of sublimation, but the male sensuality that he once implied to such effect has become explicitly shirtless, six-pack physical, and that's the way even he shows it now.But there was still the sublimation, visible here in the easiness of a jersey-backed leather jacket, and a suede jacket and pants worn with the casual attitude of a tracksuit, and the fabrics washed till they hugged the body. A white cotton jacket lined in navy was as summery as anything else you could want next year. You could practicallyswimin it. Why not? Everything echoes better underwater. And time stands still.
23 June 2014
As Giorgio Armani's business approaches its 40th anniversary, he's looking back, digging in the desert. But nothing is the same. So if the desert was the inspiration for his latest Resort collection, it was the past transported into the future. The noncolors of the desert, blasted by sand and wind, were touched with metallic details, the fabrics (double-faced wool, jacquard organza) were as light as a breeze, the textures were the ripples of a dune.But the anonymity of the desert is an obvious challenge. How do you make such vastness memorable? Where are the reference points? For Armani, they lay in the luxe effect of a croc-printed jacket in plongé leather with matching short shorts; in a bustier embroidered in bronze; in a snakeskin coatdress. At the same time, four decades of experience spoke in the pantsuit that was the collection's foundation. The trousers, with their cigarette-thin legs paired with the jacket's short, wide sleeves, updated an Armani classic. Everything old is new again, when you know how to do it this well.
1 June 2014
Profligacy has never been Giorgio Armani's calling card, but today he took rigorous discipline to an extreme with a collection based almost entirely on gray flannel. On paper, it scarcely sounded like the most promising proposition. Is there any fabric more dully corporate? So how on earth did Armani alchemize flannel into clothes of such serenity and grace?First, he pushed wool to the limit, offering it in every possible weight, from chunky to gauzy: a substantial cardigan jacket versus an evening dress that hugged the body like silk jersey. Then Armani added a splash of lime. That was the perverse stroke of genius that elevated this collection. Green, fashion's least favorite color, in one of its most polarizing manifestations. Except that itworked.That was basically because Armani covered the spectrum of grays and greens, finding unlikely but seductive compatibilities that blurred any distinctions. A knit coat, for instance, that ombré-d its way from dove gray to the vaguest suggestion of green. And a strapless gown that latticed charcoal and pistachio together. When they were layered, green made an eerie underpinning for loosely woven mohair tops.The designer dubbed his collection Fade to Grey, so it was clear where the emphasis lay. The strongest look in the show was the very first: a single-lapelled jacket curved over cropped, pleated trousers. As corporate outfits go, it was a humdinger. But there was a slash of green stitched where the jacket's buttonhole would be, and that was all you needed to see to know that Armani will always enjoy implying much more than meets the eye.
23 February 2014
Photographer Aldo Fallai shaped the popular image of Giorgio Armani's clothes from the late seventies onward. Now that there's a huge exhibition in Florence devoted to Fallai's work, you have to wonder whether Armani felt even more inclined than he has of late to reflect on his back pages. There was definitely a Fallai mood to his latest presentation: The greige palette, the white shirts with the small stand-up collar buttoned to the neck and no tie, the waistcoats…all these elements triggered memories of the sensual, shadowy, timelessly cinematic quality of Fallai's photos. They crystallized in a collection where the classic Armani jacket well and truly crossed over into cardigan country. The raglan sleeve ruled.In truth, it wasn't really that much of a leap. A cardigan is just about the most slouchily comfortable piece of clothing in a man's wardrobe, and Armani's revolutionary unstuffing of men's jackets borrowed that comfort level. But there was no slouch with his jackets today. They were soft but insistent, defining the torso with quiet strength. The show notes mentioned "an anatomical study." For once, the words weren't a flack's flimflam.The same gracious spirit prevailed elsewhere in the collection: in big, soft coats that had the casually belted ease of a bathrobe; in the drawstring waists on trousers; in the way that luxury was defused by cutting croc into a simple shirt jacket, or pairing lustrous leather pants with arealcardigan. And the rhythm of the show itself seemed significant. Just a gentle flow, no sense of building to the traditional eveningwear climax. Instead, there were more of those jackets in velvet, over a T-shirt and waistcoat. Supremely unfussy. Then Armani suddenly stepped out from behind the curtain to take his bow, and we were left with the impression that what we'd seen was probably so close to the way he himself dresses that there was no reason for him to make a fuss about it. It spoke for itself.
13 January 2014
After a Spring collection strongly influenced by the natural world, Giorgio Armani returned to the city for Pre-Fall. He's ranged far and wide in his decades-long career, but he's at his best designing for the urban (and urbane) power woman. This was a particularly resonant collection for him, filled with great clothes to wear to work. Silhouette-wise, Armani likes the look of a full, cropped pant this season. It was a surprise to see a pair of pleated off-white trousers in rugged cotton worn with a jacket in a gray menswear material, but it worked. Up top, he showed single- and double-breasted styles and also proposed a boatneck popover top as an alternative to a jacket. For evening, Armani accessorized a draped strapless gown in a liquid-y silk with lug-soled oxfords. It's not a combination that will make it onto the red carpet, but it had a youthful verve that was nonetheless appealing.
11 December 2013
"The press always needs a clear message," Giorgio Armani announced at the conference for the Italian media that followed his show today. So that's what he gave them, with a muted presentation that was, for him at least, tightly edited down to two distinct stories. "A woman who's free to fly but can carry her own weight, gentle but gutsy" is how Armani defined the two faces of his collection. The gutsiness was summed by city suits: jackets and shorts or wrapped skirts. The freedom to fly came through in fabrics that started off sheer and steadily insinuated themselves in ever enveloping volumes, until a final outfit that was like a billowing highwayman's cape of silk.There are artists who rage as they age—like Picasso, for instance—but on the evidence of recent collections, Armani has adopted a much more serene attitude to the passage of time. The gentleness of the clothes today was enhanced by a palette of pale blues, grays, and pinks and delicate effects like streams of crystal tracing a watery trail across a chiffon top, or patterns that suggested faded watermarks, or blurry florals. It was distinctly ladylike, an impression that was, again, enhanced by the tousled eighties-style semi-quiffs with which each model was cursed. That same decade made an incongruous appearance when the designer sent a trio of models—his Three Graces, perhaps—down the catwalk cloaked in vast swaths of silk georgette and topped with huge square hats. They looked rather like creatures from the Tony Viramontes drawings that currently line Carla Sozzani's gallery in Corso Como. It was the kind of idiosyncratic gesture—same with the kerchiefs a number of the models ended up wearing—that underscored Armani's own enduring gutsiness.
22 September 2013
Giorgio Armani's early acclaim as the Emperor of Greige has lingered unlovingly into the years when navy blue has become his sweet spot. That much was true once again today, with a menswear collection that, from stem to stern, made sweet music with the blues. In between, there was a subtle celebration of color that testified to Armani's extraordinary ability to continually adjust his aesthetic in such a way that there is always a sense of forward movement. Not bad for a man who is exploring the ramifications of his ninth decade on the face of the planet.If the color was overt in a cherry red counterpoint to the navy, it was more insinuating in pale blush pinks that played against white. Think of it as a graceful dance. There was also a dialogue between black and white in the tweeds and checks and a trompe l'oeil pattern of printed knit. But it was always navy that supplied the foundation. It's the perfect shade to formalize Armani's marriage between sportswear and something dressier. And it loans a coherence to the kind of graphic print that he would once have shied away from. Here, there was a batik-like print on shoes and totes, and a cloudy, coiled design on T-shirts and jackets. They were remarkable for the simple fact that they were in an Armani collection.But that is the strange kind of power the designer wields. The power to transform banality, perhaps. The most striking element in this collection was a shirt jacket. In the past, Armani built an empire on giving a man's blazer the soft, shruggy ease of a cardigan. Now, it was the shirt—shorter, tailed—that bequeathed a utilitarian edge to the tailoring. This man knows from smart casual. It is, after all, why he's Giorgio Armani— and you're not.
24 June 2013
Lightness was the key motif for Giorgio Armani's new Resort collection. It came across not just in the dresses—a wispy thing in organza embellished allover with laser-cut flowers or an embroidered V-neck shift as sheer as a beach cover-up—but also in the tailoring. The silk gauze of a double-breasted pantsuit put the focus on the unstructured silhouette Armani has been perfecting for decades. An elastic-waist navy jacket and neoprene-cuffed silk pants lent other looks in his brief lineup a sporty mien. That was counterbalanced by a renewed emphasis on ultra-polished accessories. Flat cap-toe sandals with ankle straps looked particularly of-the-moment.
2 June 2013
If yesterday's Emporio collection suggested an interest in the work of Rei Kawakubo on Giorgio Armani's part, today's signature collection compounded the impression. He called his show Garçonne, though this time it wascomme deRei in a different way, more attuned to the—in hindsight—almost romantic androgyny of her collections from several decades ago. All the models were kitted out in squishy hats and cropped black wigs. Thegarçonnethey were like could have been the gamine Amélie, the character who launched Audrey Tautou's career. And, as usual with Armani, a cinematic reference helped clarify the collection.Last night at the Oscars, the designer scored big, dressing three of the best-actress nominees. But that was Armani as Hollywood's go-to glamour-meister. The clothes he showed today could not have been more different. "Decidedly avant-garde," announced the show notes. Without going quitethatfar, there was an odd principal-boy feel to the cropped, narrow velvet pants (the designer offered the option to narrow them still further by running zips down the leg) and short fitted jackets. Armani emphasized the boyishness still further by making a feature of buttons, buckles, and suspenders, the kind of things that detail the clothes of little princes. In one outfit, the suspenders even appeared as a lacquered trompe l'oeil detail. You could imagine the denizens of Natalie Barney's Parisian salons in the 1920s wouldépater le bourgeoisiein something similar. (Or maybe that was only because French accordions—and the supremely androgynous Grace Jones—were all over the soundtrack.)Jessica Chastain and Naomi Watts wowed Oscar in blush-toned, crystal-strewn goddess gowns, but for his own collection's eveningwear, Armani opted for long black velvet dresses, slim on the hips, slightly bias-cut in the skirt to add an eccentric twist, paired with flat shoes and the luminous accent of a white organza blouse tied at the throat. Or he tacked on a sculptural detail, like a circle of pleats on the bodice. If the rigor and purity recalled Rei, there was also a lot of Armani's own iconoclasm in the result.
24 February 2013
Giorgio Armani often titles his collections with a cryptic little something. His latest,The Men's Project, was one of his most allusive, evoking the quest for an answer to thesecondmost pressing question of our age: What maketh a man? (Thefirstis, of course, What do women want?) The collection offered a 74-outfit treatise on the subject, covering everything from soldier to poet, banker to hoodie, romantic to realist, some of them in the same outfit. Hence, a brocade waistcoat and claret velvet trousers paired with a polo shirt and double-breasted gray flannel; or a cavalry jacket and drawstring pants under a shearling coat. Outré though they sound, the casual confidence of the combinations made themrealin Armani's signature fantasy-resistant mode.The breadth of the show felt like a deliberate effort by Armani to stake his claim to every splinter of the male psyche. The three-piece suits that appeared late in the show were as businesslike as anything the designer has ever shown, but they were surrounded bysauvagefurs and embossed black velvets. If there was sportiness in fitted leather jackets, there was artiness in the Deco-style geometry of knits and block-printed jackets. Still, all these signposts pointed in one direction: power. Armani cut jackets to emphasize the chest (with some help from the waistcoats that were a subtle key to the collection) and trimmed trousers to a daring slimness, drawing the eye to the thigh. The result was an impressively muscular collection, which still managed to make room for that ol' soft side.
14 January 2013
Giorgio Armani called his new collection Kaleidoscope, and his evening was appropriately splintered between his show in the Armani Teatro and an exhibition he opened in the space next door. Called Eccentrico, the latter focused on a couple of decades of the designer's most extreme flights of fancy from his ready-to-wear and couture collections. Plus thatStarship Troopersthing he made for Gaga. Armani has often mused on his love of fashion's grand eccentrics. Just as the exhibition betrayed an unlikely debt to Schiaparelli, it also poignantly highlighted Armani's own yearning to be something more than the Emperor of Greige. And maybe it also freed him in some way to focus in his new collection on the best of himself.A kaleidoscope splinters light, and that spacey notion informed Armani's clothes, which took a cue from Eccentrico's deep space setting. The first look—a silvery leather coat over a drawstring top and pants in organza—was oh-so-casual but otherworldly in its sheen. It was all in the fabrics. The kurtalike layering—short jacket over long tunic over pants—may be in the air but it's long been a staple of the Armani design vocabulary, especially in that ineffable silver gray. When color crept in, jade or turquoise, it was abstracted with the gray to evoke a blurry futurism, with the shimmer of distant stars.And there's no one who does the navy of a night sky like Armani. Harking back a couple of years to his Tuareg collection, he draped midnight silks and organzas in languid pajamalike configurations that spoke of an ease so seductive it was almost narcotic. He pushed it more and more as the show's eveningwear approached, trapping constellations and starlight in wide pants, draped tunics, floating skirts, and sheer shawls. Clothes for cosmic dreamers, indeed.And now for the caveat. Armani shows so much in every collection that there are always a few duds drifting by. And, given that the room next door was devoted to Eccentrico, it seemed only right that there should be at least one head-scratcher in his new collection. Those lids! What was he thinking? On the other hand, perhaps they served to throw the rest of this often striking collection into relief.
22 September 2012
Sportsmanship, the name Giorgio Armani gave his signature show today, could be read a couple of ways: expertise at physical pursuits, or ownership of a set of traditional values. Armani's new collection stood for both. His clothes were an efficient celebration of athletic male energy while simultaneously embodying the timeless design signature that he sees as an expression of common sense and substance in the face of a world that he feels possesses no great amount of either.The Lou Reed anthem that opened the show tended to rather counterintuitively highlight that it's the mild—rather than the wild—side that Armani takes a walk on, but who needs edge when they've got the comfort of deep-pleated pants, the flattery of a jersey blazer that expertly defines their worked-out body, or the personal pleasure of fabrics that are never quite what they seem? One of the most appealing features of Armani's clothes is that they look and feel so natural. Today, there were crumpled suits and linen blazers that looked as if they'd been worn for years, seersucker pants that were attractively slouchy rather than off-puttingly crisp, jackets that might have been hopsack, and four-button affairs that stretched out the torso.You know all of it was achieved with exactly the same effort that went into such extremes of luxury as the alligator jacket with a golden syrup glow and the trim fencing jacket in white python, but somehow it didn't read that way. That same illusion of ease illuminated a light mac lined in leather and a swingy white coat that Armani's current favorite face, Simon Nessman, was modeling.It was an illusion that was punctured by a finale featuring five young sports palling around on the catwalk in white shorts suits and trilbies. The intimacy looked awkward, but even that felt kind of real. Wow! Who'da thunk it? Giorgio Armani, Master of Reality.
25 June 2012
Sensualité, the name Giorgio Armani gave his Resort collection, was perhaps overegging the pudding a little for clothes that placed practicality before pleasures of the flesh. Armani went straight for the commercial jugular, no flights of fancy, just a clear, comprehensible emphasis on the jackets and pants his women want from him, with the added attraction of the bermuda shorts he promoted for Fall. Here, they had been given a pleatlike fold at the sides to add a little aerodynamic volume. The same fold was inserted into jacket darts, with the same result. It clarified the ease of the collection, somewhere between structure and sportswear.Armani continued that dialogue into tops with a little swing-back volume and an approach to pants that was even more relaxed than usual, thanks to bias pleats. It was all in the interests of lightness and movement. That also explained the silk gauzes and organzas and the palette of soft pastels, particularly a mint green, which was very untypical of the designer. Truth be told, the shorts and backless top in midnight organza stood out like thumbs that are the exact opposite of sore.
25 June 2012
The morning after the Oscars, and Giorgio Armani's catwalk was significantly free of anything that could be classified as a red-carpet look, bar, perhaps, the black sequined jumpsuit that had a dramatically lit spot all to itself at show's end. Easy Chic was his title for the collection. The dressiness of his closing looks, with their jackets of pavé sequins and dresses of crystal, all in hot orange, was something he imagined appealing to a younger constituency than the red-carpet crowd. And that's why those tricky bermudas made a reappearance from the Emporio show the other day. Admittedly, they were a much chicer proposition here, more formal in neatly creased black organza, but they were still an oddly polarizing anchor for a collection. Maybe they exemplified the "modern eccentric" note the designer feels his women seek from him, along with the classic Armani chords he struck with the great elongated jackets and pleated pants that opened the show. "Rockabilly," he called those looks, worn with mutant fedoras and flat shoes.A few seasons ago, Armani showed a tour de force ready-to-wear collection inspired by Saharan skies at night. Here, the accent colors—oranges and pinks—suggested desert sunsets, but Armani also used the tones in more playful ways: in an in-your-face faux fur, for instance, or a velvet coat that was decorated with what looked like brightly hued capsules. His signature collection is usually a more sober, self-contained affair, but there was plenty here to suggest Armani was keen to engage with and maybe even provoke the world. He'd clearly told his models to look at the audience as they ambled down the catwalk, as opposed to sticking with the usual frosty thousand-yard stare. The wide-brimmed hats made it awkward, but nevertheless, the designer made his point.
26 February 2012
In a season when the suit reigns supreme in Milan, lending an unusual degree of coherence to the Fall collections here, you might imagine that Giorgio Armani, the man whose take on tailoring revolutionized menswear, would be in his element. And yes, in a sense he was, but as a lone wolf rather than a consensus leader. If his show notes talked about a sense of tradition and a reinterpretation of classics, the means to his end was exaggeration. An exploded herringbone and a wide-ribbed corduroy, for instance, or a suit whose shortened jacket had a cardigan-soft shoulder and whose trouser had four fulsome pleats and a severely tapered ankle. The average businessman isn't going to look at that silhouette and think "boardroom."But that isn't really Armani's shtick any longer. He has evolved his own sui generis version of formality. It's actually anything but formal in its soft-touch sensuality and intriguing fantasy elements. These are partly about luxury—black alligator, glazed leather, inky quilted velvets—but equally, they are about jackets and pants that define the body with something akin to the almost feminine cling of jersey. There is, in fact, something transgressive about emblematic male items taken to such an extreme. You kind of wonder if Armani was feeling the same way when he crowded his catwalk with swarthy, beret-wearing guys in identical brown velvet jackets and corduroy pants. They looked like a resistance movement. And what might they be resisting? Given Armani's previous declarations, it would probably be the lean teen aesthetic that continues to dominate menswear catwalks.
16 January 2012
The story Giorgio Armani told for pre-fall isn't a new one, but nobody tells it better than he does. If he didn't invent the idea of androgynous dressing, he certainly put his imprimatur on it. And he demonstrated his sure hand here with such pieces as a charcoal gray, six-button double-breasted trouser suit. Armani makes it a policy to experiment with a new cut of pants each season. This time around, the bottom few inches of trousers were loosely gathered, creating a slouchy, draped effect at the ankle.The girl in boy-meets-girl dressing came through in the collection's bright pops of orange and fuchsia, a callback to the colors in his Japonisme-inflected haute couture show last July. The sweetest dress in the bunch was sleeveless, with a slightly blousoned bodice over a full, floaty skirt. Other numbers had a clingier, more body-conscious fit thanks to scubalike fabrics, but the evening looks that made the most impact were the tuxedos. He's still at his best when he's cutting a suit.
18 December 2011
Giorgio Armani is obsessed with light this season. His Emporio show sparkled with hard starlight; his signature show shimmered with the translucent glow of the moon on the sea—or the mother-of-pearl lining of a seashell. Armani excels at translating such abstract notions into fabric. Here, there were bias-cut silk jackets that did indeed look like nacre. And the three graces that made an awkwardly stately exit at show's end were so drenched with beads and crystals, they looked newly risen from the ocean.There is always a very particular dignity in an Armani show. Equally, there are also times when he introduces a design flourish that compromises that dignity. The unique touch in today's show was the slit that bifurcated pant legs—only in this case, it wasn't a compromise moment. Instead, it had the vaguely Far Eastern flair that characterizes so much of Armani's work, especially when the pants were laid under a skirt and jacket whose shoulders extended into pagoda points. Perfectly serene.In that spirit, Armani took the lapels and buttons off his jackets, using a single toggle or an invisible hook-and-eye as an alternative closing. You can feel him continually paring away, reducing to some fundamental element. As long as that element is water, he'll do just fine.
25 September 2011
Prints are a big story for next Spring's menswear, but when Giorgio Armani titled his new collection Printwear, it was never going to mean a world of flowers or ikat or any of the other ideas that have already presented themselves for 2012. Subtle geometry was Armani's concession to the coming trend, like the check on a sweater that quietly dissolved into ombré, or the zigzags and houndstooths fading out on a cotton shirt and pants so light they were almost gauzy.Lightness is Armani's current obsession, as we learned at Emporio the other day. But if that collection was pared to the point of plainness, this one showed why Armani is Uomo Numero Uno. A dove gray cardigan jacket swathing a sweater and pants was silvery and serene, but it's scarcely new in the Armani vocabulary. There was, however, something going on with the jackets, with the way the fabrics molded smoothly across the shoulders, that you sensed rather than saw. Impossible to define. Maybe that's exactly what it was—more definition without more structure. Masterful.Elsewhere, Armani's shifts in silhouettes were easier to nail. There was a slight flare to a double-breasted jacket. Generously cut trousers either tapered to the ankle, where they buttoned for a pegged effect, or were nipped at the knee to form a soft jodhpur shape. That's how Armani manages to alter perceptions of the most basic components of a man's wardrobe. Why you would be seduced by nipped-at-the-knee pants is a story for another time, but Armani is likely the only designer of his stature who could interest you in a pair.Same with his shoes. The espadrille is the definitive holiday footwear of the leisured classes, but Armani took it into the city, slipping a rope sole under a brogue or a boat shoe. Maybe not as playfully extreme as Miuccia Prada's potted history of the sole for the Spring just finished, but Armani's mutant footwear probably has a better chance of insinuating itself into boardrooms. And where the shoe leads, the soul follows.
20 June 2011
In 1981, while Giorgio Armani was rewriting fashion's rule book, he dressed fellow maverick Grace Jones for the cover of her epochal albumNightclubbing. Her jacket—broad of shoulder, nipped of waist—reappears three decades later in Armani's new Resort collection. It's the sort of gesture he's been prone to of late—gentle reminders of the shifts in sensibility he's initiated over the years. And maybe that was also the impetus behind the collection's orientalism, something else that has been part of the designer's vocabulary since the early days. Here, it was obvious in details like mandarin collars; frog closings; shades of jade, celadon, and lapis; the obi belt on a jersey jacket; and the jewelry, influenced by Imperial China.Armani's professed theme for Resort was actually Urbanity, so whatever else was going on was a subtext to a sleek, effortless sophistication. "A woman needs to dress and go," he said. But the emphasis was most definitely on "dress," as in clothes that projected a subtle opulence. Armani made it easy with fabrics that shone, like the satin in an evening column, or leather that was lacquered. He also used sheer fabrics for added translucence. The effect was a little like a celluloid shimmer, but maybe that impression was simply because Armani's mid-calf lengths and asymmetric fichus echoed his beloved thirties movies. In that sense, his fierceNightclubbingjacket wasn't so much retro as timeless.
16 June 2011
There's something elemental about Giorgio Armani's work. If Spring made you think of velvety midnights over the Sahara, Fall made the transition from darkness to the rosiness of dawn. But the color of a new day also made Armani think pink in another way. He called his collection Boudoir, after all. There was a lingerie slink to the satin dresses and pants that opened the show, and a group of embroidered, crystallized, and paillette-ed pink evening dresses that helped close it looked as fragile as the finest lace teddy. So did an organza coat delicately tied to one side. Still, Armani played his palette of powder and blush against black and metallic tones, so his boudoir had shadows. And indomitable septuagenarian Tina Turner was front-row center to remind the world of the sort of woman that Armani has always dressed. That's one of the reasons why his shows continue to reward contemplation. There's always a personal quirk—or at least a design challenge—in there somewhere. And after the show, Armani insisted that, even after all these years, the challenge is as difficult as ever.This time, he threw the focus onto trousers—slightly flared, cropped, cuffed, and shown with his classic jackets, either the one close to the body and elongated over the hips, or the one nipped and flaring into a peplum. The silhouette adjustment was an idea Armani pursued in his Emporio show the other day, but here it was clear that it's actually movement he's interested in. Those trousers had a perky little swing that was slightly different from his usual sinuous languor. And it was maybe in the same spirit that Armani also focused on a long ballooning skirt shape that undulated balletically. Shown with a crocheted jacket and kitten heels, the length and volume of the skirt evoked a Visconti moment.There was more movement in a mink top with a jabot of tails that swung in front, or a shrug of shells that wrapped the shoulders of a shift in coffee-colored satin, or the huge fringed shawl that draped Sigrid Agren at show's end. And any woman who felt left out when Armani chose to splash his visage across a sarong during his men's show in January will be relieved to know that there is more than enough Giorgio to go around: The same image appeared on a velvet tunic in this collection. Another symptom of an elemental spirit.
27 February 2011
The concept of the remix has been at the heart of pop culture for years, butGiorgio Armaniinvoked it today to describe a collection that consolidated the designer's classics with an updated twist here and there. Ease has been an Armani calling card since he first arrived on the fashion stage nearly four decades ago, and here it was madeeveneasier. The show opened with averyserious coat contradicted by gray flannel trousers cut like track pants, and closed with a group of evening clothes in black velvet that were casual enough to make the transition from red carpet to gym. (You can imagine Armani's young Hollywood acolytes enjoying that notion.)The designer's ability to knock the stuffing out of the conventional remains untainted by time. A black leather top peeked out from under a windowpane-checked jacket, a double-breasted jacket was as soft as a cashmere cardigan, and the stripe down a trouser leg could have equally connoted tuxedo or, again, tracksuit. He's adapted his silhouette—trousers were slightly pegged; jackets were shorter, with a dropped lapel—and he continued with the longer coats that were a hit at Emporio the other day. But the lush monochrome of Armani's palette—this time, every shade of gray, from elephant to dove—is an enduring staple. Likewise the wry humor, here expressed in a sarong printed with one of his most famous publicity shots. You don't think he's laughing?
17 January 2011
Giorgio Armanitook a detour to the Sahara for his Spring '11 collection, turning out a well-received all-navy show with hints of North Africa. For pre-fall, the African sojourn is over, and it's back to business as usual for the house. The classic Armani signatures—strong tailoring mixed with draping, the mash-up of menswear and womenswear, and sleek glamour—were all out in full force. In a mostly dark palette, Armani offered sinuous, fitted jackets and wide, thick-cuffed trousers, which hit right at the ankle. It made for an uncommon look, and paired with a fedora, a little Annie Hallalla Italiana, but it offered an interesting update on the prevailing seventies-inspired menswear chic. Nothing masculine about evening, though. There was the black velvet dress with a rosy side cowl that referenced Armani's lunar Spring '10 Couture collection, and two pearlescent gowns inspired, according to the designer, by the boudoir. The finest of them had a voluminous, gathered-hem skirt in organza and a glittering bodice banded at the bust.
5 January 2011
Giorgio Armani's secret weapon is focus. He'll take one idea and elaborate on it over the course of a collection. Today's focal point was the night sky over the Sahara: warm, velvety blue, scattered with stars. It's also the sky he'd be familiar with from his second home on the island of Pantelleria, halfway to North Africa. That emotional connection was responsible for the kind of single-minded but strong collection that yielded a vintage Armani moment.Everything was navy shading toward midnight. As the show moved toward evening, sprinklings of crystal and sequins appeared to echo the heavens at night, as in the glittering long skirt and tank that offered a sporty option for red carpets. The Saharan subtext was explicit in the Tuareg head wraps and tribal jewelry, but otherwise, Armani offered multiple variations on city-smart jackets, from tailored and basket-weave leather to peplumed and slash-backed crepe. These were invariably paired with narrow, pleated pants, which created a long, slim silhouette, even with one of the designer's now-signature eccentric interventions. Namely, he layered a skirt under the jacket, over the pants. In Emporio the other day, that skirt was stretch tulle, which looked wrong a lot of the time. Here, Armani got it right—the skirt, even when it was fluted, added something chic and streamlined to the outfit. At a stretch, it echoed the tribal layering of desert nomads, especially in a ribbed, gauzy knit that could have been a Tuareg blanket.But more than that, it reaffirmed that Armani refuses to be boxed in as Mr. Greige. Sometimes his contrariness works against him. Not today. And never forget that no less an authority than Diana Vreeland insisted that refusal is elegance.
26 September 2010
The press notes for Giorgio Armani's Spring 2011 collection began with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." But compared to his Emporio show on Sunday, which took some cues from Lady Gaga in an attempt to target an edgier, more urban audience, Armani played things pretty straight with his signature collection. (Even if he did sultry things up by applying a dab of shadow to his models' eyes.)As usual, it was all about the jacket. Low-buttoning, double-breasted ones seemed to be placing a new emphasis on the chest (or at least they did when Evandro Soldati was wearing them). Armani played with buttons (shiny) and lapels (trimmed, or shawl-collared for day). He jokily paired a gingham jacket with pants in a Prince of Wales check, paraded lacquered python for the obligatory glam moment, and matched blue jackets to shirts in the same shade for a surprisingly low-key finale.The collection was called Sun and the City—mystifying, until the sun actually did break through the sea of concrete jungle tones, in the form of chartreuse belts and suede shoes, and a chrome-yellow leather jacket. Here comes summer.
21 June 2010
Giorgio Armani's Resort collection drew together three distinct threads of his career: the combination of masculine and feminine elements, the architecture of haute couture, and the influence of 1930's-style movie star glamour. He long ago reconstructed the fundamentals of men's fashion with his women's suits, as he did with a pinstriped version in navy linen here. This season, he gave the jackets a new proportion: slightly shorter with a built-out shoulder. A man's necktie was abstracted as a trompe l'oeil detail. But there was nothing abstract about the couture spirit that was evident in the structure of a mesh jacket with a waistline that flared into a trumpet shape, or a cocktail dress with a huge grosgrain bow at the back.Almost every look had some grosgrain, like the French cuffs that dressed up a long-sleeved tee, or the lining of a white satin jacket, or the waistcoat under Armani's version of Le Smoking. That kind of detailing not only added a dose of the haute Hollywood glamour that shaped young Giorgio's sensibility, but it also underscored the fact that this Resort collection wasn't the kind of free and easy garb you'd see at any old casual holiday affair. The furled lapels of one black jacket looked like something from a Horst photograph. Another, in a lacqueredintrecciato, would have done Dietrich justice.
20 June 2010
The audience walked into Giorgio Armani's latest presentation down an avenue lined with the works of Richard Hambleton, whose graffiti-graphic black "Shadowman" paintings from the early eighties are looking mighty good of late. Armani took that black and ran with it, all the way through a show whose guts were darkest velvet. He talked about "the New Chic," but what that boiled down to was a very particular precision: a short wrapped skirt, a jacket with a broad shoulder—sometimes peaked—and seaming that evoked Joan Crawford's exaggerated tailoring from the forties. And most of it in that black velvet. The two gowns in you-guessed-it that closed the show were surprisingly funereal as a red-carpet statement, but otherwise, almost everything slotted effortlessly into the category retailers then and boozehounds now think of as after-five. Examples included the one-shouldered dress floating away asymmetrically on one side, or the jacket coated in black paillettes (an echo of the Emporio collection earlier this week). Given that the mood was predominantly black, it made sense that the standout pieces were in color: a coat-dress in vibrant red ponyskin, an orange mohair jacket, a funnel-necked coat in green velvet. Armani has often seemed most attached to the exceptions to his own rules. It's perfectly conceivable that we saw something like that today. The needle-heeled stilettos and the fringed berets that suggested a sea creature dropped from a great height onto the models' heads certainly said so.
26 February 2010
Style.com did not review the Fall 2010 menswear collections. Please enjoy the photos, and stay tuned for our complete coverage of the Spring 2011 collections, including reviews of each show by Tim Blanks.
18 January 2010
Giorgio Armani's celebrity dressers are hard at work in Los Angeles this month prepping for awards season. For pre-fall, he has another type of power woman in mind, the kind who commands a boardroom. The collection is long on the unstructured jackets and loose, flowing pants that Armani loves, against which the strong, very of-the-moment architectural shoulders of his Le Smoking stand out. Other eye-catchers include an A-line cashmere coat woven to evoke snakeskin and a drapey, deconstructed red cape. But the designer hasn't left his A-listers out of the equation entirely. Meryl would look every inch the winner in a black beaded evening jacket with silver fringe.
7 January 2010
It was hard not to read between the lines at Giorgio Armani's exuberant Spring collection. As reported, the designer was ill with hepatitis earlier this year, but he's on the road to recovery now, and he sent out a colorful, youthful lineup that veritably shouted, "I'm feeling just peachy."The show started off predictably enough with a jacket: a sharp, narrowly cut red, blue, and white houndstooth number, worn over a deep plunge-front top, loose-fitting pants cropped above the ankles, and flat sandals. Lots more jackets followed, some with origami-like pinches and folds at the upper arm (a subtle way to do the bold shoulder). Others were woven together from delicate ribbon, and still more glinted with allover crystal embroidery. They were worn with that casual (not-quite-a-) sweatpant or baggy pleat-front skorts.It was mostly after-dark where the color came in. In tune with the season, Armani kept everything above the knee, adding panels of multicolor sequins to the bodices of fuchsia and royal blue taffeta numbers and beading every square centimeter of others. That should please the party set tremendously. They'll simply trade in the flat sandals the models wore on the runway for spiked heels.This wasn't the classic, elegant, timeless Armani that his customers love him for; the designer was after something else here: a good bit of fun.
23 September 2009
Giorgio Armani continued the exploration of eighties style that he began in earnest with his Fall collection, except this time around he did it with bright colors and bold geometric prints instead of his accustomed shades of gray. It made for a lively change of pace that might win him some new converts, and at the very least, these clothes should appeal to his many fans' youthful sides. It's hard to resist the allure of a purple polka-dot print mini-caftan and its associations with the Italian Riviera and other glamorous destinations. But for those not quite ready to don an electric blue shorts suit or a bustier dress with a panel of fireworks sequins on the front, there were some pinstriped pantsuits in the mix. Take note, though—the pinstripes are pink.
29 June 2009
Style.com did not review the Spring 2010 menswear collections. Please enjoy the photos, and stay tuned for our complete coverage of the Spring 2011 collections, including reviews of each show by Tim Blanks.
19 June 2009
"Aesthetics and shapes have been chosen to update the somewhat theatrical impact of eighties-style fashion," read Giorgio Armani's program notes. Fashion is obsessed all over again with that decade, and who better to revisit the era than the man who put his own stamp on it? Armani recaptured the power-woman vibe of the time via patent leather berets and gloves, wide belts, fire-engine red lips, and a soundtrack that featured a Grace Jones tune and a medley of Tina Turner hits.There was nothing really retro about this show, though—aside from the very old-school turns the designer's models made halfway down the runway, the better to show off his swingy knit capes. Peel away the accessories and the makeup, and what remained was the soft tailoring and sparkly evening looks Armani has never stopped doing. Jackets were cut slim, smart, and fitted. The best of the bunch came sans lapels, with a single button in front and a little flare in back, although a silver crocodile stamped leather number was also an eye-catcher. The leggings-tight, slightly cropped trousers may be too unforgiving for many customers, but there were also inverted-pleat tulip skirts worn with opaque black tights.At the Oscars, Armani demonstrated his range, dressing both Sophia Loren and Anne Hathaway. The crystal-studded flat satin boots he showed here won't make it from the runway to the red carpet, but the bejeweled slipdresses and one-shoulder looks in shades of gray are a convincing argument that, whatever the decade, this designer knows how to work a winning formula.
26 February 2009
Giorgio Armani saves the dramatics for his Milan runway shows. The fancy pants he's known for—and that are now absolutely everywhere—were replaced for pre-fall by simple, narrow, or wide-leg options with jackets to mix and match in shades of gray and black, along with an equally restrained lineup of after-dark looks. Call it the new red-carpet dressing: These narrow silhouettes and understated embellishments are well suited to the times.
22 December 2008
"This collection confirms a style that has changed the face of fashion," the program notes stated. That's not too bold of a claim when it comes from a designer like Giorgio Armani, the man who rethought the modern suit, then put his own sparklingly sinuous stamp on red-carpet wear. His Spring collection had both of those signatures in spades.The show opened with elongated one-button jackets in traditional suiting fabrics. The ones that followed had a similar slight flare below the waist or a ruffle of pleats at the back, but they were made in fluid jerseys and shown with pleated and tapered silk pants, long shorts, or tucked-hem skirts. The wet-look hair and glistening makeup that was perhaps conceived to reinforce the show's breezy "Joy to Wear" message was too much of a good thing, but it was refreshing to see some big-name models on Armani's runway.And speaking of big names, how fitting that Cate Blanchett was in the audience today: Armani has no better emissary for the sort of body-skimming beaded stunners in which he specializes. He sent out one-shoulder cocktail dresses and wispy chiffons in soft pastels, but they were just an opening act for his finale: a parade of beaded and embroidered long dresses that glimmered without veering into glitz. Had the timing been different, Jessica Stam's strapless number would certainly have surfaced on the red carpet at last night's Emmys.
21 September 2008
The exoticist that lurks in Giorgio Armani's bosom doesn't get enough exercise. Several decades ago, he offered a samurai-influenced collection that gonged memorably amid the greige that was making his name. With his latest men's offering, Armani could almost have been channeling Yul Brynner inThe King and I. The most powerful impression the collection left was the sheen of silk shantung in intense oriental shades of lilac, cyclamen, orange, and imperial purple. It was cut into what looked like cropped dhoti pants, the uniform of Giorgio's model posse in the finale. They dropped into yoga poses and turned as one to face the sun king, Armani himself.Metaphor? Well, there were plenty of other impressions. From the get-go, Armani was keen to de-emphasize structure. Pants were drawstrung, jackets as unconstructed as shirts. The silhouette was softened with scarves draped around the neck or tied round the waist instead of belts. Chenille cardigans and sinuous jacquards defined the torso. Leathers were perforated, washed, or textured in ways so artful they might as well have been paper. An outfit consisting of what might have been a pajama top paired with cropped pants expressed the consummate ease that Adrien Brody was praising backstage. But a jacket in ivory crocodile was a reminder that Armani's ease is distinctly deluxe.
23 June 2008
The days when cruise collections were all about clothes for holidays and parties are long gone. The 30 looks in Giorgio Armani's latest ran a full gamut, from a reinterpretation of Armani's office-bound classic suit to a midnight blue tux. Draping was a theme: Tops were gathered to one side with a single button. The emphasis was on a long, fluid silhouette in soft, natural fabrics like linen and shantung. Pants were full enough to evoke the languorous loungewear of a thirties vedette. Calm and restrained as the collection was, there were still a few of the eccentric touches that Armani injects to keep things interesting for himself: a hit of color here, an abstract floral print there.
22 June 2008
Yesterday's Emporio show had the designer exploring his sporty side. But after opening somewhat perplexingly with a male model in a velvet suit, his Giorgio Armani collection today launched off in a different direction entirely—one that felt unapologetically feminine. "Free-spirited," he called it in his program notes. In place of those boyishly practical cuffed trousers were soft velvet pants worn with blouses made from crisscrossing swags of pleated ruffles. And instead of office-ready menswear patterns, he played with flowers, printing them on his new longer skirts, knitting them extravagantly into the lining of a fur jacket, and arranging them across the hem of a sheer tulle top.He really poured it on at night, tossing cobwebby scarves and wraps over nearly every one of his fringed gypsy dresses, and closing the show with a pair of dresses that looked like they were embroidered with thousands of colorful, glistening candy wrappers. He definitely got a bit carried away sometimes, but when he dialed back the details a notch or two, he sent out many desirable clothes, including a long cardigan coat in black and a grand cape that could've been a nod to the Costume Institute'sSuperheroes: Fashion and Fantasyexhibit he's sponsoring in May.
17 February 2008
He called his collection "Regal," but Giorgio Armani is clearly a kindly king. This season, the designer has emphasized happy coupledom on his catwalks, and, at the end of his signature show, he brought his entire design team onstage to take a bow. They were celebrating a collection that marked Armani as master of his domain. In a season where pattern and texture have come to the fore, Armani came into his own. His work has, year after year, resisted trends and fallen in and out of favor with critics, and this season his lustrous quilted velvets, shawl-wrapped knits, and softly reassuring coats came across like a luxurious security blanket. Which isn't to say that this collection was some kind of deluxe mush. It was disciplined in its construction, even quite hat-and-gloves formal. The way in which daywear and dressing up flow seamlessly into each other seems to be a theme that has been absorbing Armani of late, so here he offered high-collared shirts, velvet-collared jackets, three-piece suits with waistcoats that buttoned high and old-fashioned.Their softness saved the pieces from rigid formality, and they helped to underscore the inevitable cinematic subtext of all Armani's work. By "Regal," it's safe to assume the designer was thinking of Hollywood royalty as much as any tin-pot Euro monarch. Indeed, there were moments when one imagined a modern-day Cary Grant racing through a screen adventure in something like the richly bronzed nylon coat or anaconda-print jacket. But only a younger screen stud could swing Armani's black velvet tux with matching shirt. It's surprising how avant-garde a combination of such traditional elements can look.
14 January 2008
As recent paparazzi photos attest, Giorgio Armani enjoys soaking up the rays in St. Bart's. But the Italian designer didn't get to be a household name by slacking off at work. Proof that the maestro has had his nose to the grindstone can be found in his well-edited pre-fall collection of career clothes. Who doesn't need a well-cut blazer, or for that matter, a pair of draped, full trousers and a sleek pencil skirt? A muted palette of browns, blacks, and grays added to the no-nonsense feeling—though there were a few lively touches of hot pink and green, and in the designer's one nod to evening, an iridescent gold dress.
8 January 2008
The languid, sensual summers of southern Italy were Giorgio Armani's starting point this season—or so his program notes said. From the looks of the silk "trousers tied at the knee," the long wrapping scarves in glittering beads, and the harem-pant gowns, he could have been revisiting India (the country that inspired his terrific Privé couture show in January) by way of the Middle East. While this collection didn't pack quite the knockout punch that Privé did, it scored points with some lovely clothes.Whatever the inspiration for those unusual pants, Armani came up with an endless variety of covetable tops to wear with them: short jackets, in gray or navy, over longer silk tunics; crocheted cardigans dusted with glitter; slim, almost mannish, blazers; and beaded racer-back evening tanks, the best an emerald-green version that, one editor whispered, would be great with a regular pair of jeans.Looking beyond theI Dream of Jeannieevening jumpsuits, Armani showed an array of real-life after-dark options, ranging from red-carpet crystal-beaded gowns with deep fringe below the knee to less formal, but no less special, styles with bamboolike embroidery that should play to the crowds descending on his new Tokyo flagship when it opens in Ginza this November. Milan, Japan, or Mumbai—Armani's brand of romance knows no borders.
23 September 2007
Resort found Giorgio Armani doing what he does best—classic shapes in beautiful fabrics, with some after-dark drama thrown in for good measure. Cutaway striped jackets were paired with narrow pants or accordion-pleated skirts, and a cheeky navy shorts suit came dressed up with an oversize brooch. His evening offerings ranged from a pure white column of a gown to a flapper frock dripping in jet beads. Also in the mix were a pair of embellished maillots.
25 June 2007
Front-row fan Matthew Fox couldn't make his mind up which outfit he liked best. That would probably be the sane response of any man confronted with the range of options offered by Giorgio Armani in his signature collection. He opened with the urban formality of a tableau of suits, then quickly headed south for the summer, to islands like Pantelleria and Stromboli, where dressing is as easy as a pair of pajama-soft pants and a barely constructed velvet jacket. As usual, the jacket was the collection's building block, in everything from a silken herringbone to a summer-striped, elasticized-waist version, but this time the shirt was important, too, as a paradox: It made its presence felt by its absence.In its place were easy shirt-jackets that did away with the need for anything underneath, or cropped waistcoats (the best with draped-scarf necklines), which temporarily raised the suspicion that the navel was Armani's focus for the season. When shirts did show up, they were collarless or baseball-style, or as light as voile. The palette was based on shades of stone and sea, except for blousons in woven alligator or taupe-y crocodile. They were a reminder that Armani is perfectly capable of injecting a note of slightly decadent luxe into all that warm-weather airiness.
25 June 2007
A giant, globe-traveling retrospective of Giorgio Armani's three-decade-long career finally touches down in Milan this week. And the jackets on his runway today were not unworthy heirs to the many timeless variations in that exhibition. Some curved around the torso in natty tweed, others came with pert peplums. One, cut in gray leather embossed to look like crocodile, blousoned at the waist. These he showed not with his signature pants, but with multiple versions of a slim skirt with a soft drape a few inches above the knee—a look he finished with flats for a youthful, modern feel.Formal eveningwear, which is so well represented at the La Triennale show, was likewise notably absent here. Armani showed just one gown, embroidered with new Swarovski crystals cut to his specifications—an effect that was glittering if a bit stiff. Cocktail dresses with intricately beaded bodices and softly ballooning skirts in the palest of pastels were effervescent by comparison. They worked well when their harnesslike straps were made from delicate jet crystal. As for red-carpet showstoppers, it seems the designer is saving those for the Oscars this Sunday, not to mention the just announced Armani Privé presentation in Los Angeles at the weekend.
18 February 2007
Giorgio Armani established the manifesto of his show with back-projections of the legendarily stylish director Luchino Visconti and poet Gabriele d'Annunzio. Other times, other places, but they've meant the world to Armani throughout his career, and it was easy to see their influence in this new collection (if not in specific details, at least in the general ambience of indulgence and sensuality). Velvet carried over as a favorite fabric—soft, liquid, shimmering, it's an ideal vehicle for Armani's signature (de)construction. Suits in shades of bitter chocolate or midnight-blue velvet were quintessentially glamorous, but Armani also offered mandarin-collared velvet shirts. D'Annunzio would surely have lounged in something similar while he puffed away on his opium pipe.For those disinclined to such activities, there were more energizing options: a blouson that combined croc and quilted satin, for instance, or a buckled, belted leather jacket that would complement a stylish tough guy like Clive Owen, comfortably ensconced in the front row. The mood of louche luxe didn't discourage Armani from a little proportion play—with diagonally closing jackets and waistcoats, for instance, or with trousers tucked into boots (a jarringly militant moment). But his heart will always be in the dream world he has spun out of his visions of an ideal Italy in the twenties and thirties. And so he closed out his show with his niece Roberta accompanying the bullfighter Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez, star of the designer's campaign for his new made-to-measure service, down the catwalk. Armani understands that we need heroes now.
16 January 2007
A few days after mounting his Emporio extravaganza in London, Giorgio Armani showed that he hadn't exhausted his bag of staging tricks. Approximately halfway through his signature line's presentation this afternoon, the lights dramatically dimmed and the white catwalk was covered by a glossy black one. But beneath the showmanship, there was a focused attention to detail here. What came before the scene change was Armani by day. Flowing pajama pants and narrow tea-length skirts in silk (the bottoms weren't really the point) were topped by one great-looking jacket after another. Some were fitted and single-breasted, others asymmetrical and cut away at the sides, and still more came slouchy and almost oversize. Scarves knotted restrictively across the upper arms almost obscured their lines, though nothing could detract from the freshest of his new toppers, which were cropped and boxy and had just a hint of the volume that's been seen on other runways.The accessories, as is their wont on Armani's runway, threatened to get in the way of his eveningwear. But he quickly showed why he's still the go-to designer for after-dark elegance. The field may be more crowded now than when he began dressing the likes of Michelle Pfeiffer and Jodie Foster two decades ago, but the pioneer of the Milano-movieland connection remains a fount of persuasive options, from a pale pastel column suspended from a contrasting ribbon around the neck to a pair of strapless boned styles with minimalist bows. Saving the best for last, he closed with an allover-silver beaded gown. Sublimely simple in front, it came with a graphic, cutout back that will show off toned celebrity skin to the best advantage. Leonardo DiCaprio, sitting front-row, should rush to have it reserved for his Oscar date next March.
24 September 2006
Giorgio Armani claimed inspiration for his new collection from the many homes he owns around the world, images of which were back-projected throughout the show. Given that he has houses in such enviably sunny spots as Antigua, Saint-Tropez, and Pantelleria—and this was a spring/summer collection—you might have expected a tour around Giorgio's World of White Linen. But in fact there was a dark formality to these clothes.Aside from some gauzy drawstring pants that could pass muster on the beach, the designer essentially showed suits, or dressed-up re-combinations of jacket, trousers, and waistcoat. Like his peer Ralph Lauren, Armani is always making movies in his mind (front-row fan George Clooney underscored the connection). Here, for instance, his pairing of striped shirt, waistcoat, and slightly baggy pants looked like something that the boys in a classic Italian film would wear for Sunday best. The dark-rimmed eyes and slicked-back hair confirmed the impression.Even Armani's monochrome palette has a cinematic quality, and given the grays and silvers he favored in this show, that was more the case than ever. Beneath the formality, though, there was still evidence of the designer's signature modern ease. He showed his pinstripes with white "techno" trainers developed in Japan, his dressy two-tone shoes had crepe soles, and his proposal for eveningwear included shirts and trousers in a dark linen so fine it flowed like silk.
28 June 2006
Giorgio Armani—and not a pantsuit in sight? That was one surprise Armani delivered in a fall show that was consistently focused, not on the work options he nailed years ago, but on evening, in all of its guises. Operating on the understanding that real life isn't one long red carpet, and with the pragmatism Armani is famous for, the collection worked methodically through appropriate solutions for every tricky event on the calendar: after-work drinks, semiformal dinner, corporate entertaining, all the way up to the full-on flashbulb event.Armani started by reworking his signature windowpane-check jacket into a short, nipped-waist shape worn with a gray satin skirt and high heels. That silhouette—covered but decorative on top with something slinkier going on below in the style of 1940's Hollywood—was played out in many ways, some more extreme than others. A few of the looks, with peaked shoulders and, say, a spotted emerald-and-purple dévoré draped skirt, paid a passing reference to the colorful side of eighties fashion from which Armani abstained during his power-suit years. A bedazzling satin and crystal-beaded nude number that nodded toward Bob Mackie was one more step into the unexpected.Armani rounded off the collection with sparkle. There were many variations of the crystal-embroidered evening dresses that helped establish his pioneering relationship with Hollywood's A-list years ago. The show ended on home ground, then, but again there was the feeling that the designer has entered a more playful space. Perhaps this so-called somber personality is capable of teasing, too: Though many have complained about his egregious cocktail hats, he keeps showing them, regardless. He ended with a pink fluorescent sprout topping a fuchsia-toned crystal gown that could've only been a private laugh at his audience's expense.
19 February 2006
Giorgio Armani titled his latest show "Velvet Man," and there was certainly truth in advertising in that. His signature men's collection was a paean to the plush stuff. There was scarcely an outfit that didn't render at least one of its components in velvet, most often the trousers, which Armani showed in a generous new volume that flapped around the ankles. (They also came high-waisted with suspenders.)Velvet spilled over suit jackets in the form of hoods, or peeked out from underneath in jewel-toned frog-closed waistcoats. Shirts were printed with velvet roses; blazers came in velvet tweed, plaid, or a faded argyle. There was even a pair of shoes in herringbone-patterned velvet. The fabric loaned itself well to Armani's favored color scheme of mushrooms, taupes, and heathery grays, and it was the perfect complement to the gentle tailoring that is also his signature. (Crepe-soled shoes underscored the comfort factor.)After a while though, a body began to yearn for a little structure. Just in time, an overcoat in double-faced cashmere came as a blessed relief from the soft parade. As for the eccentric twists we have come to expect from Armani of late, asauvagecollar-less fur coat, a silver weekend bag, and crimson suede slip-ons caught the eye. He himself stood up and was counted as a Velvet Man for his final bow, in a plush black jacket, white shirt, and tie.
19 January 2006
Need a beaded, shimmering, once-in-a-lifetime gown? Put Giorgio Armani at the top of your shopping list. The finale of his show summed up a lifetime's dedication to defining and refining the starry impact of his crystal-frosted column. For spring, those dresses captured a beautiful fragility in barely-there shadings of ivory, champagne, mushroom, and mauve. Finely layered chiffon and tulle, picked out with minute embroideries of bugle beads and sequins, qualified each one as a singular piece of signature Armani. (We could have done without the hats—a lot less modern-looking than the sleek, oiled, silent-movie hairstyles sported by the rest of the models—but that's a minor quibble.)With this collection, the designer said that he had resolved to focus on what women really wear today. On the runway, that translated into soft tailoring and skirts, either tiered or of the floppy tulip variety—all familiar Armani territory. Where he's really amping up his contemporary awareness, though, is in another direction. For the first time, each and every one in his army of models was clutching a different bag. After claiming the night as his own, Mr. Armani is letting it be known he's intent on staking a claim on the handbag business.
27 September 2005
"Eight minutes of concentrated Armani," is how the designer explained Armania, the name he gave his show. It was actually nearer 12, but compared to some of the Armani epics in the past, what's four minutes? Either way, the presentation was a fast-paced breeze. It did indeed distill his signatures—the sober palette, the soft fabrics, the sensual tailoring (taken to an eccentric extreme, as is the designer's occasional wont these days, in a finale of barefoot boys in baggy satin pants)—but it also extended them.So navy, grey, beige, and that distinctive Armani greige were joined by sage, pale lilac, and a deep mulberry. Seersucker and a sheeny silk-linen blend juiced up the fabric repertoire. And Armani continued with the shorter, higher-waisted jacket that he showed earlier in the week. It curved down the models' backs like a second skin. There were other options too, such as the cut-away double-breasted shown with black pinstripe trousers, or the high-closing three-buttoned jacket.Occasionally, Armani emphasized construction with contrast stitching, as if to remind us what the central issue of his career has always been: to construct or not. His absorption in the utterly deconstructed was made blatant in the form of jersey jackets that clung to the body in a way that would surely be unforgiving if one was anything less than physical perfection itself. That's not a problem for the remarkably buff designer, of course, but others in the audience were leerier. "I don't have the body for it—yet!" drawled comedian Sean Hayes, part of the show's celebrity contingent, with Usher and actor Charlie Hunnam.
30 June 2005
Just before the finale of the Armani show, the theater was plunged into darkness and filled with the sound of an Italian man laughing maniacally. It went on for some time. What was that? Could it have been Giorgio Armani himself, splitting his sides backstage at the thought of the bloomers he had just visited upon womankind? At any rate, the interlude provided one tenuous explanation for everything that went on below the belt in his fall collection: bloomers, narrowish in velvet by day; bloomers, puffed up into a taffeta bifurcated bubble by night; plus a few Bermudas with fluted frills at the knee thrown in as an alternative.If only Mr. Armani would just reconcile himself to some regular trousers (those straight, two-legged, ankle-length things we all find so difficult to source, please), all could have worked out very satisfactorily in this show. Unarguably, there's something fine in the way Armani continues to develop his 30-year expertise in jackets. They were there in full force, looking fresh and supple in every variation from zigzag gray wool, to one-button velvet blazers to minimal military Spencers. These, and his fit-and-flare and swing coats, are clearly his core attraction. Quite why he persists in diverting attention from them is a conundrum.Perhaps Armani is reluctant to revisit the place where he started. Certainly, his drive over the past decade has been to prove that he can be someone other than the genius who bestowed fantastically liberating softened men's suits upon eighties working women. But he won that argument years ago, by beating every other designer to the forefront of Hollywood red carpet dressing. The long mermaid dresses from his new couture collection have been siphoned off the ready-to-wear runway, in preparation for their imminent Oscar appearances. In their place, he ended this show with a series of short crystal-beaded evening looks (mercifully sans bloomers), but even they couldn't make up for the mystifying absence of a single viable pair of pants.
21 February 2005
Giorgio Armani name-checked Jean Cocteau as inspiration for his latest menswear collection. The renaissance man of the surrealist movement might seem like an unlikely muse for this meticulous designer, but Armani has been intrigued by eccentricity of late. And he appears to be having a lot of fun with it. For this collection, he wasn't at all prepared to rest on his laurels. Instead he was playing games with his silhouette—bagging out the trousers before drawing them in at the ankle, shortening one jacket, hiking the waist on the next and letting it flare out over the hips.One thing that never changes is the softness of Armani's clothes. His jackets are still molded to the body with all the suppleness of fine-gauge cashmere. He offered a matching cardigan and sweater—a kind of male twinset—as well as jewel-toned velvets for evening, a nod perhaps to Cocteau's dandified glamour. There was also a flamboyant edge to a frog-closed shirt under windowpane checks, jackets with cuffs unbuttoned and turned back to reveal striped silk linings, and a large cape (Jean was a cape man). Even the outerwear was touched by the exotic—leathers and sheepskins had tiger-patterned linings or horn buttons. And the models' aerodynamically swept-back hair recalled Cocteau's own do—just one more tip of Armani's cap to his hero.
19 January 2005
Giorgio Armani has spoken recently about the creative frustration of keeping his design within the rigid, straight-and-narrow confines of commercial expectation. Perhaps that's why he chose two eccentrically mismatched inspirations for spring—Elsa Schiaparelli and chinoiserie—and dubbed the collection Shocking.The bizarre effects came most obviously in strange straw turbans, coolie hats, and sparkly surrealist bug pins. Though he opened with a relatively muted beige jacket and a long silk skirt curved up in front, Armani's thought process then veered into variations on Chinese silk pajamas, interspersed with sparkly tiered dresses, hoop-skirted mermaid gowns, and a silk-tasseled fringed bodice.The sequencing of the show, if not exactly shocking—from evening to day, and back again—certainly provided some unexpected jolts. Sometimes, however, giving the audience what it wants turns out to be the best policy. Armani did exactly that with a posse of white beaded gowns—precisely the kind of clean glamour his Hollywood faithful require.
27 September 2004
Giorgio Armani seems imbued with a new spirit of generosity lately. No longer the solitary tortured genius, the designer brought the staff of his studio out at the end of his show to share in the runway bow. That new spirit extended to the clothes, which had a manly, creased, sensuous quality that was less the urban glam of last season and more the movie stars of Hollywood's golden age.There was something of the thirties in the proportions, especially the full-cut pants, but with 14 jacket styles featured in the collection (and at least as many types of trouser), you could equally find up-to-the-minute experiments with texture and shine. The latter effect, clearly a new favorite of Armani's, conjured up the silvering of moonlight. It was a bit odd for a summer collection, but still in keeping with the old-time matinee idol mood evoked by the models' kohl-rimmed eyes and slicked-back hair. Romance, evidently, is also on the rise at Armani.
30 June 2004
Giorgio Armani has a new focus. "Women want to be diverse, not to follow a standardized look," he said of his fall show. "They want to be motivated by something special. That's why they've started looking for vintage pieces." Inspired by what he called "a vague feeling for the 1900s, and Visconti's filmThe Damned," he sent out a romantic assembly of looks designed to be remixed by the wearer, rather than imposed as top-to-toe solutions.Armani drew a long, supple silhouette with dresses, coats, and jackets that were cut close to the body and gently fluted toward the hem. Standouts included laser-cut and printed velvet pieces, scalloped-edge lace jackets, beaded halter dresses, and crystal-encrusted evening jackets crafted as softly as blouses. Huge sparkling brooches underscored the air of decadent eccentricity that is fast becoming the look of the season. Among the rich, couturelike handwork that has long distinguished Armani's evening looks, he also sent out a selection of his luxurious signature streetwear in the form of ankle-skimming, vaguely Napoleonic coats.In condensing this show to a 20-minute sampling of his vast collection, Armani embraced the eclecticism that is a ruling factor in fashion right now. It looked like a beautiful step forward.
22 February 2004
Giorgio is forecasting an easy summer. Catching on to the light breeze of the twenties that’s blowing through fashion, he charted a course for the season using playful, nautical stripes as landmarks, guided by his career-long true north—the play of masculine and feminine styling.Of course, Armani isn’t one to take a sailor theme literally, even when he’s using navy-and-white stripes. His distinctive hand shows in his taste for floppy, supple fabrics; and his small jackets and delicate layerings of sheer and opaque project the effortless, cheerful vibe that’s becoming a main message of the season.In his lightened-up mood Armani has come to terms with showing some skin, as with slouchy, midriff-baring pants and leggy little dresses (the standouts came with sequined stripes). And was that a sense of whimsy peeking through in the embellishments—the Schiaparelliesque starfish, crabs, and lobsters sprinkled on tanks and bags? The collection navigated that touch of surrealist humor, too, without sailing off course.
29 September 2003
For his main Fall collection, Giorgio Armani followed through on the short lengths and feminine sensibility he explored with his Emporio line. It was a much younger, softer feel that almost—but didn’t quite—cross over into the land of cute. In essence he recut his distinctively supple jackets to hug rib cage and bust and switched his focus from pants to flared skirts that stop five inches or so above the knee. It’s not a complete change of character, though: everything the designer showed for winter was in his beloved black and white.Though short, Armani’s skirts—often done in stiff black ciré fabric—were a long way from the tarty pelmets that have been strutting other Milanese runways and a more feasible option for his core clientele of grown-up women (if you overlook the patterned sheer tights that opened the show, that is). His use of contrasting textures, meanwhile, turned up several variations on current trends. There were a few strapless black dresses and couture-like coats that put a modern spin on ’50s ladylike styling. And pieces like a black PVC jacket and a simple but decorative beaded tank are the kind of key items that can spark up a winter wardrobe. At a time when women love to cherry-pick across brands instead of acquiring single-label top-to-toe looks, those versatile possibilities alone represent a subtle breakthrough for the house of Armani.
2 March 2003
Giorgio Armani is one of the few living designers who still care to address the needs of a professional woman in search of a suit. For spring, he applied himself to softening up the staple in a variety of ways. A gray suit was given a younger feel with the addition of a hip, stripy underpiece, while pants became more casual via elastic waists or drawstring details at the ankle. More surprising—especially for the man who pioneered androgynous ease in women’s tailoring—was his latest suggestion for a skirt to put under a jacket: a tight, sexy knee-length pencil in satin.Armani's eveningwear attracts a big following as well—and the reason was lined up in the front row of his show, where celebrities Kim Cattrall, Tina Turner and Sophia Loren were scanning the runway for red-carpet suggestions. The designer offered them a huge range of possibilities, made of subtle Italian fabrics, often with an Oriental flavor to the cut and color. From long skirts paired with tiny, supple leather jackets right through to strapless and beaded gowns, the best moments were the simple ones. The standout? A dramatic body-skimming floor-length column in caf¿ au lait jersey.
29 September 2002
"No to excess, no to overdone nudity; no to the obvious and commonplace, no to sensationalism"—these words are Giorgio Armani's creative response to the realities of life post 9/11.Armani's vision has always been about melding the utilitarian practicality of menswear with the softening influence of innovative fabric as evidenced in his first sequence of gray herringbone and Prince of Wales jackets shown with fluid pants. The soft-but-strong structure of an Armani jacket is a design landmark, and he emphasized it throughout cutting neatly fitting shapes with slightly pointed shoulders. Bellboy looks, short spencers and strap-fastened jackets were all teamed with voluminous pants, and many outfits were accessorized with the designer's new bags (the best was a large, dark brown leather boxy oblong style with handles). Through over eighty looks, Armani experimented with variations on the trouser theme from harem pants to knickers to pleat-fronted styles. He even pushed the design of the baggiest pants so that they appeared as a kind of skirt caught into stirrups near floor-level.For evening, Armani sparkled via bugle-beaded bustiers, cutaway sequin dresses over pants and—the shining standout—a silver beaded jacket with a matching flower in the lapel.
3 March 2002
Giorgio Armani had plenty to celebrate today. His presentation served as the official inauguration of the impressive Armani theater, nestled within his brand-new, 12,000-square-meter commercial headquarters designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando.Armani presented a light, fluid collection executed mostly in black and white. Jackets were slightly squared, short and structured, paired with asymmetric-hem trousers. Off-the-shoulder, striped handkerchief tops suggested a Deauville getaway, while a series of tank dresses blended athletic chic with ballet-inspired romanticism. Transparency was the mantra for evening, with brilliantly embroidered flowers inching their way up wide-leg trousers and barely there gowns.In an adjacent room, Armani also hosted a photographic exhibition,The Making of the Pirelli Calendar 2002. The behind-the-scenes photographs were taken by Peter Lindbergh while shooting the iconic calendar, which this year features Hollywood's brightest young stars wearing … Giorgio Armani.
30 September 2001
Giorgio Armani continued to play a game of opposites, firm in his belief that strength and femininity go hand in hand.Armani showed short blazers worn over fluid, lightweight trousers. Double-faced caban jackets were cut slightly off the shoulder to give them an informal air. Prince of Wales and striped overcoats hit the floor, emphasizing a fluid silhouette. Armani also showed small bodices paired with full, multitiered skirts and structured dress coats that billowed at the hem.Eveningwear was an homage to Picasso's blue period, in varying shades of navy and shimmering with paillettes. Giant sequins glistened under layers of tulle, skirts were flounced and pleated, and raised embroidery decorated spaghetti-strapped tops.
4 March 2001
With a major retrospective of his work this fall and the opening of his massive new Milan store tonight, there was certainly no shortage of megawatt celebrities at Armani's presentation today. Sarah Ferguson, Phil Collins, Sophia Loren and Robert De Niro all stopped by to pay tribute to one of the most important designers of the past 30 years.Armani's women—all brunettes this time around—had a coquettish, gamine charm to them, wearing masculine pinstriped trousers with suspenders, relaxed jackets and sleeveless silk T-shirts. Ultra-light lace dresses were adorned with faint, leafy patterns on a sheer background; honey leather jackets, cropped and unlined, gave the look a stronger edge. Eveningwear revolved around backless, beaded and knotted tops, paired with shimmering, crystal-embroidered pants or short, frilly skirts.
3 October 2000
It was a welcome treat to see Giorgio Armani do what he does best: dress sophisticated women in classic, chic clothes. The suit—Armani's forte and the season's leitmotif—played an appropriately prominent role in this collection. But forget untailored and slouchy--these suits were sharp, closely cut and sexy, in jet-black or gray. There were also cropped fur jackets with blue and lavender highlights, colorful striped tops and embroidered trousers in shades of mint green and coral. For evening, Armani indulged in a series of floor-length sophisticated black-and-white beaded gowns, which explains why he remains the darling of the international cocktail party set.
25 February 2000
Armani proposed a light, feminine silhouette for the new millennium, inspired by the lines and colors of Kandinsky. Sea foam, fuchsia, and lime chiffon infused his collection with a delicate dreaminess. But the Armani woman is as practical as she is ethereal, so there were also plenty of pinstriped wool pants, polished linens, and classic tops. The real innovation came in how models wore the pieces: short jackets were shown with low-waisted pants cropped at the ankle, sarongs were overlapped or doubled and floral dresses were paired with tie-dyed cashmere. Armani's explanation: "The real woman of 2000 does not want to be hostage to the rules of fashion. She wants the freedom to create her own look with passion and a sense of self-fulfillment." Enough said.
28 September 1999