Just because Giorgio Armani wasn’t physically at his show (for the first time since 1975), doesn’t mean he wasn’t all over it. Shortly before the show he was Facetiming his team backstage. And precisely two minutes after the due start time of 7PM he called his top lieutenants on the ground to enquire—quite urgently—why it was not yet up and running. The lights flashed three minutes afterwards, urging us to our seats.
Fifteen or so minutes later, Leo Dell’Orco, Armani’s head of menswear design, took a bow to warm applause. Still, it was strange to see an Armani show without seeing Mr. Armani himself. The designer, who turns 91 next month, is currently at home on the other side of Milan recovering from a short bout of illness that reportedly saw him briefly hospitalized last weekend. Ultimately, however, his absence did not detract from the clarity of his design signature.
The show opened with a tightly assembled pack of models who speed-walked down the baked clay tile runway in what looked like ultra-marathon technical gear, all handsome and all by EA7. Some of their light, piped, nylon track jackets and shorts were printed with the same geometric patterns we would shortly see integrated into the Emporio Armani collection that followed: these looked like patterns drawn from the rich textile heritage of the Taznakht region in Morocco’s Atlas mountains.
As quickly became clear from the embroidered carpet duffle bags that accessorized some of the first Emporio looks, this was a roving, rambling collection. Its path seemed, to this inexpert eye, mostly to encompass northern and central Africa and central Asia. According to the house press note it pursued “a founding principle of [Armani’s] aesthetic: a genuine interest in other cultures and a passion for different ways of expressing oneself through the everyday act of dressing.”
It certainly is interesting to watch a menswear collection whose frame of reference encompasses territories far beyond the occidental borders to which they are customarily limited. Even without the informed eye of a fashion anthropologist, it seemed evident that the garments freely referred to multiple traditions and cultures: a wardrobe more global than those we are accustomed to.
The many pieces it contained included tassled-upper clog mules, tunics made of feathers, richly patterned silken bloomer pants that billowed with movement, brimmed rattan hats with rough ponytails of material, and fringed necklaces adorned with roughly beaten charms. There were collarless jackets and matching pants in kaleidoscope reliefs; generously folded shawls; a long leather coat of olive green cut in thickly stitched paneled sections; and oversized fringed suede liner jackets. We saw pants with more plissé in one leg that a hundred pairs of chinos, plus long overshirts and jackets in metallic-finish silks, amulets in metal and resin looped from leather cord, and a linen smock top printed with drawn elephants, giraffes and storks; and stone-studded skull caps. Integrated within it were sections of the soft suiting that is Mr. Armani’s home territory, but here rendered in densely fashioned fabrics that reflected the broader imaginatively nomadic itinerary of this collection.
The note added that some of the patterns reflected “representations of infinity.” This was an infinitely expansive collection from Mr. Armani who—even from home—took us traveling without moving.