“Changing so as not to change,” was a line in the press release. This Emporio Armani show contained several changes, including the first appearance of Emporio’s menswear studio director Nicola Lamorgese and his womenswear equivalent Marco Brunello alongside Mr. Armani when bows were taken at the finale. Another unusual element was that we did not all troop straight out of the Teatro post-show: instead Armani kept it open to host a party that promised to continue long into the night. This was to mark the reopening after a six month refurb of the big Emporio store on Via Manzoni, below the Armani Hotel.
Yet another shift was that Armani delivered some quotes along with his usual thematic collection release. These, naturally, concerned change. He said: “The past twenty years have seen the progressive prevalence of digital across every sphere and many things have changed, including consumer habits. However, I believe that physical stores provide a unique, irreplaceable, multi-sensory experience with the added value of human contact—something the virtual world lacks. A physical shop offers customers the opportunity to touch, try, and immerse themselves in the brand lifestyle. It complements the digital realm and can never be replaced by it.”
Tonight’s show was Mr. Armani’s first since turning 90 in July. Next month he is due in New York to throw another show to mark the opening of a new Armani building on Madison Avenue that will contain apartments, a restaurant, and, of course, a new Giorgio Armani store.
The collection we saw this evening featured menswear too, but nonetheless contained way over 100 looks: an expression of strength. It took a ’90s Emporio image of a female model in a suit by Tom Munro as its starting point, and punctuated phases of gamine and colorful womenswear with punctuation marks of men’s.
This brand, which opened for business back in 1981 with a store on via Durini, has always worked to connect Armani’s core codes with wider shifts in the vernacular of taste. Sporty vest dresses in kaleidoscopically shimmering horizontal stripes and some treated synthetic harnesses and parkas in washed rainbow watercolor tones were emblematic of that here. Conversely that core and Munro’s catalyst were considered in a phase of pale gray traditionally patterned suiting with breaky pants, nipped-waist jackets, and painstakingly articulated shoulders. The menswear played most notably with extreme volume, lowering jacket skirts to mid-thigh and using pleating and draping to engineer shape in pants sometimes wide enough for four legs to fit into. Whatever line it’s cut for, Armani’s masculine suiting is enjoying a real revival at the moment as it is discovered by a new generation looking to mature out of streetwear and connect more deeply with a more elemental expression of personal style. Plus ça change.
