Sunday evening, on my way to the Emporio Armani fashion show here, I did what I always do with… oh, six spare minutes in my day: I looked on eBay.
Perhaps to get into the spirit of Armani, I searched for ‘vintage Armani’ (a search I’ve kept in my account for a few years) and browsed through the hundreds of Armani jackets, shirts and knits on the market washed up. place.
Half an hour later, watching Emporio’s show, I felt as if my eBay search had come to life.
There, in front of me, were sandy chevron sweaters, ruffled cigar brown leather blazers, insulated jackets up to the waist with pockets taped to the front, and suits that, for maximum drama, were buttoned at the collar: all cousins, if not brothers, of items I had seen on eBay.
The buffet of 120 looks (Armani doesn’t skimp on his modeling budget) was a reminder that Giorgio Armani, the Italian titan who at 90 still looks healthy in his staunch navy blue T-shirts, long ago found his design language – and he adheres to it. Speaking a new dialect now would be illogical and destabilizing for Armani’s legion of consumers.
This was on display again on Monday during a very in-the-pocket Giorgio Armani show.
Much of that collection, with its crushed-velvet suits in eggplant, band-collar blazers and boat-neck knit sweaters with hatched motifs, looked as if it had been lifted straight out of “Giorgio Armani: Images of Man,” the oft-cited 1990 catalog can jump. of Mr. Armani’s early designs. What do you do when you’ve done everything? If you’re Giorgio Armani, you do it all over again.
Well before this men’s fashion week, the stage was set for an Armani renaissance. A generation not born in the 1980s, when Mr Armani put Milan on the fashion map, has delved into the wonders of the ‘Armani archive’ and scoured the past for hits by Emporio and Giorgio. Closely watched resale shops like the Archivist Store in Paris, Lara Koleji in New York and La Nauseé in London are repackaging old Armani pieces as contemporary grails. (They’re cheaper than today’s runway stuff, but sometimes not by much. La Nauseé recently sold a 1990s double-breasted leather Emporio overcoat for 1,500 pounds, about $1,800.)
Armani is not in the background in this game plan. In recent years, the company has marketed itself to younger shoppers by partnering with Kith, the “Wait, Do They Sell More Than Sneakers?” campaign. streetwear boutique and Our Legacy, the menswear brother brand of the moment. When I visited Our Legacy’s showroom on Saturday (about two minutes from Armani’s headquarters here), members of the Emporio Armani team sat with Our Legacy’s brain trust. Shoppers in the showroom started grinning when news leaked that a second joint collection between the two brands was on the way.
Not that Mr. Armani is sitting back and spinning his wheels. In both collections there were flashes of ingenuity and risk.
The high notes at the Emporio show included a very “Sunset Boulevard” corduroy zipper with a fur collar the size of a well-fed Jack Russell and a Zsa Zsa Gabor-meets-gorpcore fleece jacket in a cheetah print. Now almost a century older, Mr. Armani still has spirit in him. (Not everything worked: A clutch of three-piece velor suits looked a little too much like formal wear from Juicy Couture.)
At the Giorgio show, an almost off-the-shoulder leather jacket in newspaper gray and a cropped peacoat with a fluttering leather collar left a strong impression. This also applied to a tan suit with striking pleated trousers, made from a material that fell somewhere between jersey and tweed. I can’t say I’ve seen that before.
Do yourself a favor: set a reminder now to look for those pieces on eBay in about 25 years.
