BEAUTY: Clothing--Emporio Armani

I love Giorgio Armani: I say it every time I blog about his work. Every season for his own eponymous label or for his Emporio Armani line (the more causal and sportier version of Armani), I swoon at what his house creates and sends down the runway. I respond most to designers, designs, and shows that have a strong inspiration and concept, and a near-performance art presentation. But Armani does not need concepts. He has been creating his own sense of easy luxury for nearly half a century now, and it's still fresh and relevant today.

He deconstructed the men's suit in the 80s, turning it into something soft and sensual, something sexy and flowing, without altering the basic concept of what it was. He removed layers of felting inside suits, making them relaxed and able to behave like thin silk. Just take a look at the iconic clothing from the film "American Gigolo" and you will see what I mean. It was soft and casual with a sense of effortless power. This revolution rippled out into the industry and we see its waves even now: designers still grapple with ways to make suiting less stiff, to make clothing more luxe without being precious, and to make pieces with more innate ease without being sloppy. In short, to make clothes more Armani. But no one does Armani like Armani. Clean lined and impeccably tailored, Armani's sensibility is about luxe fabrics and the way a garment hangs and drapes on the body (of both men and women).

But there is something else that I really respond to in each Armani collection and that is a vague sense, a shadow, an echo of historical fashion. The way a jacket or coat is cut or its stance, the inclusion of waistcoats, belted outerwear, loose cut and high waisted trousers...it all reminds me of...what, the 1920s and 30s? The 1880s? The 1940s and 50s? Yes to all of it.

So for his current Fall-Winter '24-'25 collection at Milano Moda Uomo, he once again mines silhouettes from long ago, this time in the context of a nautical life at sea. And the garments make me flash on sailors from the early 1900s. Overcoats and beautiful wide, wide cut trousers recall a 1920s seaside adventure in the south of France, along the Côte d'Azur. Slouchy thick leather boots and later in the collection, a set of coral, barnacles, and sea life embellished on garments in crystal gives the entire affair a modern twist.

In the show notes, Armani wrote: "I have never hidden my love for the sea, a symbol of freedom and adventure. This season, however, I reflected on the Atlantic crossing and the ships that have braved it. It is a way for me to explore the spirit of Emporio, with an emphasis on the fluid transition between masculine and feminine. Something natural to me yet always radical."

So much beauty.

https://www.armani.com/