The best way to relate to an Armani Privé show – if relating to anything during haute couture week isn’t too fanciful a notion – is to imagine you’re an A-lister shopping for your next red carpet dress. Would you find something that suits? A-listers, after all, are Privé’s main focus. Unlike other designers, Armani doesn’t even pretend to do day wear in these collections. It’s all about a drop-dead showstopper.
I say shopping, but few celebrities ever pay for a red carpet outfit. Often, they are paid – six figures to wear a gown; more for jewellery. Even if you lose at the Oscars, the BAFTAs and the Globes etc, you win. Do the red carpet rounds in a given season and you can make as many low-budget indie films as you want next year.
Sometimes wearing a designer’s haute couture is heavy work. If they’re having an off-day; if they’re ‘experimental’; if they’re simply not very good but holding down a multi-million-euro job as a creative director anyway, having them dress you can be a nerve-jangling business. But you let them because it’s lucrative. Forget governments – fashion is one of the more reliable providers of subsidies.
But then there is Armani who has consistently delivered ultimate red carpet moments for four decades and is still a class act. Eva Green, Cate Blanchett. Naomie Harris and Jodie Turner-Smith were all front row (Blanchett is also an Armani beauty global ambassador) – you’d be happy you came. It was one of his best collections in aeons, with every Armani achievement of the past 40 years served up in shimmering beaded and sequinned versions. From the metallic trouser suits that opened it to the sparkling beaded dresses at the end and the twinkling cropped cardigan jackets in the middle section, all that glittered was gold – except when the beading or sequins were black.
Sometimes crystal panels were patch-worked with black velvet. Pearls were a big theme. Giant ones quivered on hats; smaller ones were worked into jackets or onto the seams of pockets.
Armani takes pride in not being in lockstep with everyone else, He has no interest in being edgy (the soundtrack to this show was Glenn Miller). But he’s one of the most visionary designers of the past half century. And interestingly, some of his loose-to-the-body, maxi-tank dresses were compatible with Dior’s on Monday. As at Dior, Armani had contrasting inserts under the armholes and, like Dior’s, they looked enticingly breezy and slightly sportif, whilst also delivering plenty of star wattage. What a change from some of the trussed-up ball gowns we see so often at big events like the Met Ball.
Giorgio Armani himself has been conspicuously absent at the latter event. His public fallings out with US Vogue, which organises the spectacle, are notorious and often entertaining. But Anna Wintour was at this show. Armani, now 90, looked frail as he took his bow, flanked by two models – but what a body of work. Much of what he showed is rooted in his archives, but it looked as fresh and enticing as ever.
More from the show
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