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 this warm, shimmering Fall-Winter '25-'26 collection at Milano Moda Uomo, Emporio Armani showed, as usual, insanely luxe fabrics but in some amazing colors: champagne, antiqued silver, patinated copper, satin brass, bronze. The show opened with a selection of winterwear and ski clothing, which is usually an interlude in the middle of the collection. Toward the end are some stunning garments featuring jacquards and velvets with beautifully rendered Asian motifs and what looks to be some heavy, complicated, jeweled embroidery (the jackets in looks 57 and 58 below). It was as if Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald took a trip to China in 1921. Indeed, the final look was a sort of Goth couple with the air of the 1920s or 1930s about them, dressed for a chic night out but with details from someplace like Nepal or Tibet...
https://www.armani.com/
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