At 82, sole owner of the megabrand that bears his name and with personal wealth estimated around £5bn, Giorgio Armani is still celebrating his own creation myth.
The collection shown at his Milan headquarters on Friday will be on sale next summer, and many of Armani’s global customers live in regions where summer is very hot indeed.
But with the exception of a few diaphanous dresses, the focus remained on the unstructured tailoring on which Armani made his fortune. As a concession to the season, trousers were swapped for slim bermuda shorts or neat, sarong-wrapped skirts finishing just above the knee.
Navy jackets were swapped for – well, navy jackets, but in sheer fabrics, edged with sequins to catch the sun. The few pieces of menswear dotted through the show stayed true to the timeless aesthetic of the Italian man at leisure: simple shirts in expensive fabrics, trousers hemmed with soft precision exactly at the ankle bone, sockless slip on shoes.
For Armani, the catwalk show is less about new trends than it is an opportunity to reinforce his position as a name synonymous with Milan fashion week. To the same end, Armani is staging a photographic exhibition, Emotions of the Athletic Body, which features portraits of David Beckham, Rafael Nadal and other sportsmen and women who have appeared in Armani campaigns.
On 26 September, he will host a show by the Chinese label Ricostru at his imposing purpose-built catwalk theatre, as part of his initiative to support emerging designers. “The future of the system depends on new generations, and I am happy to be able to contribute,” Armani told Womenswear Daily when he launched the scheme in 2014.
